South Africa is intensifying its crackdown on financial crimes, including money laundering and terrorist financing, and is confident it will pass its upcoming integrity check-up.

The Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) has rolled out an upgraded Beneficial Ownership Disclosure Module specifically for law enforcement agencies.

The platform is designed to give law enforcement agencies instant access to critical data to combat financial crime.

The country officially exited the the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list in October 2025 after spending 32 months resolving 22 specific action items.

Speaking at the launch on Friday, Trade, Industry, and Competition Minister Parks Tau lauded the new system, stating it will help the country stay off the FATF  grey list during its next evaluation this October.

While the country remains under close global monitoring,  Tau says the nation is ready to defend its financial rules at the FATF Mutual Evaluation this month.

He says, “We think that the work has been done on beneficial ownership from legislative commandments’ to the system’s development? There’s actually going to meet the standards that would be required when the mutual evaluation happens.”

Tau adds, “So, we’re quite comfortable about the work that we’ve done, but we’ve part of a comprehensive system, cabinet continuously receive supports on the progress that’s been made on the overall part of greatest issues, what we’re doing, where the challenges are, and what is being resolved, and I can assure you that, in fact, the country has been active, across the department, across the agencies, and government, to ensure that we’re able to deal with issues of financial crime.”

He says SA’s global standing requires a strict approach to financial oversight.

Tau also emphasised that keeping up with international standards is vital for the country’s economic reputation.

He says, “South Africa sits at some of the most demanding tables in the world, we are a member of the G20, we are a member of the Financial Action Task Force. That membership comes with a price Since the register opened on 1 April 2023, it has received more than three million beneficial ownership filings, covering local and international owners.”

SYSTEM BEARING FRUIT

CICP Commissioner Adv Rory Voller says the system is already starting to bear fruit.

Voller says, “We give greater access to law enforcement by the click of a button, so they can immediately access the data in the offices that don’t need to come all the way to Pretoria, and the second aspect, what we’ve done is that we’ve created data linkages between some of the digital information that we hold in our register, like company data, and we’ve tied it to beneficial ownership data, so that when law enforcement and investigators are looking at the full picture, they can connect the dots between who owns what, which companies they are behind, who is related to whom, and basically able to do what a full investigation in terms of that.”

Director at international organisation Open Ownership Karabo Rajuili says with criminals becoming sophisticated, shell companies mushrooming and financial crimes becoming extremely complex, it is important that the country gets an accurate beneficial ownership network for increased accountability.

Rajuili says, “It’s also going to as the minister said have to be linked to concrete prosecutions. The other part of this, of course, is beneficial ownership data is about personal data, which is collected, about the natural persons behind these corporate structures, and so some of the safeguards, in terms of how the data isn’t misused, have been put on place through various legal provisions to ensure that the use of beneficial ownership data does not infringe on the privacy rights of beneficial owners.”

The National Treasury will soon table the General Laws Amendment Bill before Parliament which will amongst others, empower the CIPC to issue administrative fines directly and to deregister companies that fail to file beneficial ownership information for two years in succession.