Iran Represented at Key FATF Meetings for 1st Time in 6 Years

An Iranian delegation has participated in the key meetings of the global financial crime watchdog FATF after a six-year absence and amid efforts by the country to get off the body’s blacklist.

Iran’s finance ministry’s financial intelligence unit said in a Tuesday statement that the unit’s director, Hadi Khani, had led a delegation attending the Plenary and Working Group Meetings of the Financial Action Task Force, being held on October 20-24, in Paris, France.

The statement said that the Iranian delegation will outline the country’s efforts to ratify and implement the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, also known as the Palermo Convention, during its presence in FATF meetings.

Iran approved the Palermo Convention in May, after several years of heated debates in the country and amid fears that joining the convention might undermine Iran’s financial independence.

The FATF, an international coalition for combating money laundering and terrorist financing, which is headquartered in Paris, blacklisted Iran in 2020 mainly because it had failed to adopt the Palermo Convention and the 1999 UN Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (CFT).

Iran finally approved the CFT in early October, although the FATF has yet to be officially notified of the move by Iran’s Foreign Ministry, which would take place after the UN confirms Iran has joined the convention, the Iranian finance ministry’s Tuesday statement said

It said that the FATF would probably discuss Iran’s approval of the CFT in its upcoming meetings. Iran is subject to a harsh regime of American and international sanctions, which makes it difficult for the country to engage in normal banking and financial relations with the rest of the world.

However, economic experts believe Iran should be removed from FATF’s blacklist if it wants to maintain its ongoing trade and business relations with countries that reject UN and US sanction policies against Tehran. - Press TV