President criticizes opponents of FATF

EghtesadOnline: President Hassan Rouhani in a Twitter message on Thursday, criticized opponents of Iran's engagement with the Financial Action Task Force requiring Tehran to set standards to combat money laundering.

News ID: ۷۶۹۹۰۰

01 October 2016

'When we start measures to fight money laundering, some try to demonstrate the FATF as an unclean issue,' President Rouhani wrote in his Twitter post.

'We don’t want money laundering in the country', he said.

The Financial Action Task Force, is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1989 on the initiative of the G7 to develop policies to combat money laundering, according to IRNA.

In 2001 the purpose expanded to act on terrorism financing.

The FATF issued a statement on June 24, 2016, suspending Iran in the list of its uncooperative countries.

This came as the result of numerous actions taken by the Iranian government, parliament and judiciary in the past few years like adopting laws against financing terrorism and other actions which legally bounded Iran to take action to eliminate shortcomings of the body's existing anti-money laundering policies and its decision to seek assistance with implementation.

In its plenary meeting in South Korea, the body took into account Iran’s implementation of an anti-money laundering law and its membership at the Eurasian Group, a FATF-style regional body.

According to the FATF, Iran will remain on the body's blacklist until the full implementation is complete.

Moreover, if Iran fails to demonstrate “sufficient progress” at the end of the yearlong suspension, the restrictions will be re-imposed.

FATF is under the influence of the United States.