FATF-related bills still being reviewed by Expediency Council
According To Iran News, Secretary of the Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei said the two remaining FATF-related bills, namely the Palermo and CFT, are still being reviewed by the Council’s members.
He said the issue was still being reviewed at the Expediency Council and he could not disclose any information about the case at the moment.
“I will talk about the FATF-related bills in the future and after the necessary studies have been conducted. The issue is still being addressed by the Council,” he added.
Asked when the Council would reach a conclusion on the bills, Rezaei said “I don’t know yet. I will talk about it after the issue has been discussed.”
The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global anti-money laundering body, has given Iran a final deadline of February 2020 to implement a set of four bills to meet the standards set by the watchdog.
Last October, Iran’s Parliament passed the four bills, but only two of them have so far gone into effect.
The Expediency Council is in charge of deciding the fate of the two other bills, namely one on Iran’s accession to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, commonly known in Iran as ‘Palermo’, and the other one a bill amending Iran’s Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) law.
Those against the endorsement of the FATF-related bills say the move would impose further restrictions on Iran’s economic relations while the country is under US severe sanctions.
“It is not in the country’s best interest to make its dealings transparent to institutions such as FATF,” Mesbahi Moghadam, a member of the Expediency Council had said.
