BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 17. Iran's refusal to join the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is detrimental to the country, the Iranian expert Farshid Bagherian told Trend.
According to him, refusal to join FATF has resulted in Iran selling its products, mainly crude oil, at low prices and purchasing products at high prices.
Bagherian added that Iran exports its products through an intermediary and imports products via an intermediary.
“This means that Iran is wasting its national wealth by selling it several times cheaper, and at the same time it has to spend more funds to import products,” he said.
The Iranian expert noted that based on this, Iran should approach FATF and try to remove obstacles to entry.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is an intergovernmental body that regulates rules against money laundering and financing of terrorism. At the last meeting of this organization, Iran was warned that if Iran's program of steps is not improved, Iran may be added to the list of non-cooperating countries. Iran has complied with 37 out of 41 FATF steps.
The remaining four steps or conventions fall under the area of legislation. “Amendments to the Law on Combating Money Laundering”, ‘Amendments to the Law on Combating the Financing of Terrorism’, ”Accession to the International Convention on Combating Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo), and Accession to the International Convention on Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) have been drafted by the Iranian government and sent to the parliament. Although the four conventions have been approved by the parliament and sent to the Advisory Council, the CFT conventions and the Palermo Convention have not yet been approved by the mentioned council.
FATF was established in 1989 on the initiative of the G7 group to combat money laundering. The organization has 37 members and its secretariat is located in Paris.
Iran has been on the FATF blacklist since 2007, and since 2009, retaliatory measures have been officially applied against Tehran. Therefore, countries had to be cautious in their financial and banking transactions with Iran. Since 2016, the implementation of diplomatic measures against Iran has been postponed.
To note, the financial group FATF added Iran to the list of non-cooperative countries (blacklist) on February 21, 2020.