Each year, criminals send billions of rands in illicit funds offshore, with cryptocurrency increasingly playing a greater role in facilitating such transactions. And experts question whether a government plan to regulate crypto exchanges will put a stop to it.

The Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group (IFWG), composed of several of the country’s financial sector regulators, in June recommended in a position paper that the mandate of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) be amended to include crypto trading platforms.