June 16, 2017
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – the global body that monitors money laundering worldwide will have Iran on top of its agenda when it convenes June 18, the Central Bank of Iran’s director for international affairs announced.
The group is to rule on whether Iran has implemented its action plan for blocking efforts at money laundering and financing of terrorism.
A decision that Iran has done what must be done may unlock considerable foreign investment. A decision that Iran’s promised reforms were just hot air will likely keep Iran isolated from international banking.
Only Iran and North Korea are on FATF’s blacklist.
“The FATF meetings will kick off June 18 and will last for six days in Valencia, Spain, in which the task force will measure Iran’s progress in terms of adherence to Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism [AML/CFT] in both software and hardware sectors,” Hossain Yaqoubi was quoted as saying by the state news agency.
Yaqoubi noted that if FATF’s report concerning Iran’s improvements turn out to be positive, a large number of Iran’s banking restrictions and international issues will be resolved.
“An important reason for the international banks’ refusal to work with Iran is that we are still on FATF’s blacklist and hopefully these problems will go away,” he said.
In March 2016, the Majlis adopted a law for combating the financing of terrorism and expressed a high-level political commitment to implement the related action plan. Last June, FATF said the text of the law was good but it would wait a year to see if Iran carried out its pledges. That year is now up.
