Iran Press/Europe: “Given Iran’s failure to enact the Palermo and Terrorist Financing Conventions in line with the FATF Standards, the FATF fully lifts the suspension of counter-measures and calls on its members and urges all jurisdictions to apply effective counter-measures,” the group’s 39 members said in a statement after a week-long plenary session.
These would entail more scrutiny of transactions with Iran, tougher external auditing of financing firms operating in the country and extra pressure on the few foreign banks and businesses still dealing with Iran.
The group's decision came after European countries decided to join the United States in its ‘Maximum Pressure’ campaign against Iran.
However, the FATF appeared to leave the door ajar for Iran saying “countries should also be able to apply countermeasures independently of any call by the FATF to do so.”
The US regime has already reinstated all the sanctions that were eased under the 2015 nuclear deal after it unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in 2018.
On Feb 16, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi said that Iran's enemies know that the sanctions are useless and ineffective, referring to US cruel sanctions against the Iranian people.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said earlier this week that the United States is using its maximum pressure campaign to exert influence at the FATF.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is an inter-governmental body established in 1989 by the Ministers of its Member jurisdictions.
The objectives of the FATF are to set standards and promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.
In October 2018, Iran's parliament approved four bills put forward by the government to meet standards set by the FATF. Only two of them have so far gone into effect and the fate of the two others, one on Iran’s accession to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the other one a bill amending Iran’s Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) law, is still in limbo.
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