FATF keeps Iran on its blacklist and tightens grip

October 30, 2020

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) ended its annual plenary October 23 and announced that Iran and North Korea will remain the only countries on its blacklist.  But they will now face tougher FATF standards.

According to Reuters, Marcus Pleyer, president of the FATF plenary, said the situation with the two countries has not changed and therefore they will remain subject to restrictive measures.

Even if US sanctions were to be lifted by a new US president, the FATF banking restrictions would remain in place and might have almost the same impact as the US sanctions.

Pleyer said the two countries are now more skilled at circumventing FATF sanctions, and therefore other countries should be smarter in their banking and financial dealings with them.

At US urging, FATF adopted new rules designed to better enable banks to detect the use of front companies and shell firms by Iran and North Korea.

Iran was put back on the FATF blacklist last February when the organization stopped giving Iran extensions on top of extensions of the deadline for it to come into complanace with FATF standards.

Foreign Minister Moham-mad-Javad Zarif recently said that one of the reasons for the sharp rise in prices in Iran, especially the unprecedented rise in foreign exchange rates, was the Islamic Republic’s inclusion in the FATF blacklist.