TEHRAN, Iran, June. 4
Trend:
The head of Iran's presidential office said that the government made every effort to pass FATF-related bills.
Referring to presidential candidates' claims that the government did not take the necessary efforts to ratify FATF-related bills, Mahmoud Vaezi said that the government made every effort to pass these bills, Trend reports citing IRNA.
"Seven cabinet members attended the Expediency Council meetings to answer the Council's questions," he said.
"The Vice-President for Legal Affairs, the minister of economic affairs, the central bank governor, and the foreign minister were presented at these meetings," he said. "If the issue was not important to the government, the cabinet members would not attend the Expediency Council`s meetings and would not answer their questions in person or writing."
"Cabinet members attended meetings to facilitate the passage of FATF-related bills," Vaezi added.
He went on to note that the Iranian government was willing to join FATF conventions, but someone tied the bills to sanctions and now they are tying the sanctions to the FATF.
In May, as a result of its mutual evaluation reports, the FATF keeps a blacklist of “high-risk jurisdictions” — which currently includes only North Korea and Iran — and a grey list of “jurisdictions under increased monitoring,” which includes 19 countries and territories.
The majority of the members of the Expediency Council opposed joining the UN's anti-money laundering conventions.
The CFT bill was one of the four pieces of legislation against money laundering and funding of terrorism that the Iranian Parliament ratified in October 2018 to meet the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force, an international watchdog based in Paris.