An international group that monitors money laundering worldwide is expected to decide this week to keep Iran’s regime on its blacklist of high-risk countries despite aggressive lobbying by Tehran to come off the list to help it access the global financial system, Western officials said.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), established in 1989 to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, compiles the list, which it regularly updates. Its 37 member states are meeting in South Korea.
“No changes to Iran’s status on the blacklist are imminent, though I think perhaps we can expect some words of encouragement and recognition of Iran’s attempts to make progress,” one Western official familiar with FATF discussions, who asked not to be named, told the Reuters news agency. Two other Western officials concurred this week with the opinion that Iran’s regime would not be taken off the blacklist at this time.
As a result of last year’s nuclear deal between the major world powers and the Iranian regime, many international sanctions against Tehran were lifted. The United States, however, still has sanctions in place that prohibit trade with Iran’s regime in dollars and Iranian access to New York’s financial system.
Financial Action Task Force spokeswoman Alexandra Wijmenga-Daniel responded to a request for comment by saying the group would publish an update on high-risk and non-cooperative jurisdictions after the session later this week.
Paris-based FATF said earlier this year that it remained “particularly and exceptionally concerned” about what it called Tehran’s “failure to address the risk of terrorist financing and the serious threat this poses to the integrity of the international financial system.”
