Case Explained: South Africa tightens financial crime legislation – Legal Perspective

The country aims to close remaining gaps in its financial crime framework before its next evaluation by the Financial Action Task Force.

South Africa has proposed revisions to its financial crime legislation to tackle remaining gaps in its framework. The national treasury has floated amendments to four pieces of legislation, along with proposals to equip the South African Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) with more power. The bill was released by the Treasury for public comment on Wednesday (14 January).

The Draft General Laws (Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Terrorism Financing) Amendment Bill 2025 provides an updated legal framework to the General Laws (Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Terrorism Financing) Amendment Bill 2024.

The items of legislation that fall under the proposed amendments are the Financial Intelligence Centre Act 2001, the Companies Act 2008, the Financial Sector Regulation Act 2017 and the Nonprofit Organisations Act 1997.

Among the revisions, the new bill aims to expand the scope of anti-financial crime investigations to cover non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and to conduct lifestyle audits. Additional proposals include permissions for information-sharing between agencies, expanded powers for the FIC to tackle deficiencies relating to financial sanctions, as well as deficiencies concerning new technologies, and to address issues with customer due diligence for anonymous clients.

The country was removed from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) greylist – the organisation’s list of states with an inadequate anti-financial crime regime – in October last year, and has set the goal of addressing the “remaining deficiencies” identified by the FATF in its 2021 review and its remedial report in 2025 before the next evaluation, which is scheduled to start later this year and will run until October 2027.

The bill was developed in consultation with the Financial Intelligence Centre, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, the Department of Social Development, as well as financial sector regulators the Prudential Authority and the Financial Sector Conduct Authority.

South African stakeholders have been invited to submit public comment on the bill until 13 February this year.