Archive · South Africa
All 10 archive entries on South Africa, most recent first.
The National Treasury published the Draft Capital Flow Management Regulations 2026 for public comment in April 2026, replacing the Exchange Control Regulations of 1961 and bringing crypto assets formally within South Africa's capital flow framework for the first time.
The FSCA published a supervisory update on crypto asset service provider licensing on 15 April 2026, reporting 30 supervisory inspections of CASPs conducted between April 2025 and March 2026 under the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act.
The FSCA imposed a R350,000 administrative penalty on Thembnkululeko Construction (Pty) Ltd, a registered financial services provider (FSP 53486), for regulatory violations, announced 10 April 2026. No systemic issue underlies this action; it is a routine penalty against a named entity within the Authority's continuing compliance programme.
South Africa's National Treasury confirmed it will amend the Exchange Control Regulations to govern transfers of cryptocurrency to non-residents, according to an April 2026 analysis published on Polity.
The Gauteng High Court interdicted Fusion Guarantees (Pty) Ltd from issuing construction guarantees, holding in a 23 March 2026 judgment (Elasah Risk Consultants v National Credit Regulator and Others) that such guarantees meet the definition of non-life insurance under the Insurance Act 18 of 2017: premiums paid, an undertaking triggered by an uncertain event, and indemnification of loss.
The FSCA imposed an administrative penalty of R358,750,000 (approximately USD 18.9 million) on Stephanus Johannes Stehan Grobler, formerly Steinhoff International's chief legal and treasury officer, for materially misleading financial statements covering 2014 through the 2017 half-year, in breach of the Financial Markets Act. The penalty is among the largest individual fines in the FSCA's history, alongside the R475 million penalty earlier imposed on former CEO Markus Jooste. This is market-integrity enforcement, not data protection enforcement.
The FSCA imposed a R710,000 administrative penalty on QuickTrade (Pty) Ltd, an online CFD and forex broker, for multiple breaches of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, including customer due diligence and anti-money laundering control failures, and coupled the fine with a remediation directive. The action forms part of the FSCA's continuing anti-money laundering sweep of retail trading platforms.
The Information Regulator sought leave to appeal a North Gauteng High Court ruling that allowed the Department of Basic Education to publish the 2025 matric results in newspapers despite the Regulator's enforcement notice prohibiting it.
At a media briefing on 13 November 2025, Information Regulator Chairperson Adv Pansy Tlakula disclosed enforcement notices against Blouberg Municipality, Lancet Laboratories and FT Rams Consulting, a settlement with WhatsApp that is to be made an order of court, ongoing litigation against the Department of Basic Education over the matric results, and the Regulator's intention to seek a court ruling on whether telemarketing falls under POPIA section 69. The briefing set out a docket that shows POPIA's practical scope is increasingly being determined through litigation rather than through the Regulator's own guidance.
The FATF removed South Africa from its grey list on 24 October 2025, ending a multi-year remediation of the country's anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regime, coordinated across the Treasury, SARB, FIC and FSCA. For the continent's largest financial services hub and crypto asset market, delisting removed a stigma that had weighed on institutional participation and VASP licensing decisions.
Enforcement decisions, new laws and regulatory movement across African jurisdictions, in one brief. Free, and built to be forwarded to the colleague who needs it.
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