Majid Ansari told IRNA that the two remaining FATF-related bills that Iran has been required by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force to endorse are still being evaluated by the Expediency Council.

He declined to comment about whether the two bills would be finally rejected or approved by the Council.

“The joint commission of the Expediency Council has held several meetings in the past few months on this issue, and will continue to hold some other meetings in the future,” he said.

Asked whether the members of the Expediency Council are concerned about the deadline running out, he said “I have nothing to say about that. As far as I know, the bills are still on agenda of the joint commission of the Expediency Council.”

This is while another EC member, Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghadam, had told Mehr back in November that the Palermo bill was no longer on the agenda as the one-year deadline for the Expediency Council to evaluate the bill against the country’s national interests had come to an end.

“The deadline for reviewing the CFT bill is not over yet,” he had added.

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, known as 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 had said.