Safeguarding South Africa’s economy: Highlights from the FIC 2024/25 Annual Report

The Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) stands at the forefront of South Africa’s fight against financial crime as highlighted in the 2024/25 Annual Report which showcases a year of progress, innovation, and collaboration. In 2024/25, the FIC continued its focused approach in the pursuit of assisting law enforcement and other partners to address financial crime in South Africa and assist in growing the economy. The FIC’s annual report highlights how the country’s financial intelligence unit delivered on its mandate, achieved a clean audit, and contributed towards bringing South Africa closer to being de-listed as a jurisdiction under increased monitoring, commonly known as being ‘grey listed’. The FIC’s mandate expanded significantly in December 2022, now overseeing compliance for all designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBPs), credit providers, and crypto asset service providers. This broadened scope required the FIC to refine its risk-based supervision approach, introducing new tools to identify institutions at higher risk of being abused for money laundering or terrorist financing. By the end of March 2025, over 55 000 institutions were registered with the FIC, submitting approximately 13.5 million regulatory reports. During 2024/25, the FIC conducted 157 compliance reviews and issued reports to assist reviewed institutions with improving their understanding and execution of the compliance obligations under the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FIC Act). Compliance reviews provide an opportunity for the FIC to increase accountable institutions’ awareness of their FIC Act obligations and assist them firsthand, with improving the quality and quantity of regulatory reports they submit. The FIC’s work has a tangible impact on South Africa’s economy and society by identifying and disrupting illicit financial flows, supporting asset recovery, and fostering a culture of compliance. In doing so, the FIC helps protect the country from the corrosive effects of financial crime. It produces various financial intelligence reports following its analysis of regulatory reports and information it receives accountable institutions. The financial intelligence reports are submitted to law enforcement, the revenue service, and other competent authorities for use in their investigations, prosecutions and applications for asset forfeiture. The FIC does not itself conduct investigations. The FIC contributed to the recovery of close to R144 million in criminal proceeds in 2024/25 flowing from the 3 104 reactive and 1 092 proactive financial intelligence reports it produced, as well as 51 reports on illicit financial flows. Established within the FIC in May 2023, the Shared Forensic Capability (SFC) provides forensic service support to law enforcement, revenue authorities, intelligence services, and other competent authorities in terms of section 40 of the FIC Act. Forensic support includes specialised resources in forensic accounting, analysis and reporting, as well as producing forensic evidence and presenting such evidence in court. In its first full year of operation, the SFC division contributed to asset recoveries to the value of R14.37 million and to the enrolment of 14 cases for prosecution. The FIC continued to play a leading role in the timeous sharing of financial and other information between partners in government, civil society, and the private sector to expedite the prevention, detection, investigation and resolution of criminal matters. This flow of information was facilitated in 2024/25 through FIC-led national initiatives such as the Reformed Fusion Centre and the Asset Recovery Hub. The Asset Recovery Hub is aimed at fast-tracking matters towards asset recovery where there is a high risk of assets being dissipated. Working closely with the Asset Forfeiture Unit in the National Prosecuting Authority, and with the support of law enforcement partners, the hub initiated 11 investigations which resulted in the recove