BAKU, Azerbaijan, August 11. Iran will soon join the transnational convention on combating organized crime (Palermo), the spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said at a press conference in Tehran on August 11, Trend reports.
According to him, the aforementioned convention document was one of the issues that needed to be resolved between Iran and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) working group.
According to Baghaei, part of the work related to Iran's accession to the FATF conventions is being carried out by the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
On May 15, 2025, the Iranian Advisory Council ratified the FATF Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo). The Convention on Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) is currently under consideration.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an intergovernmental body that regulates anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing rules. Iran has implemented 37 of the 41 FATF steps.
The remaining four steps or conventions relate to the legislative sphere. “Amendment to the Anti-Money Laundering Act,” “Amendment to the Anti-Terrorism Financing Act,” “Accession to the International Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo) and Accession to the International Convention against the Financing of Terrorism (FT)” were prepared by the Iranian government and submitted to parliament.
The FATF was established in 1989 on the initiative of the G7 countries to combat money laundering. The organization has 37 members and its secretariat is located in Paris.
Iran has been on the FATF blacklist since 2007, and since 2009, countermeasures have been officially applied against Tehran. In this regard, countries have to exercise caution in financial and banking transactions with Iran. Since 2016, the application of countermeasures against Iran has been postponed by diplomatic steps.
The FATF financial group added Iran back to the list of non-cooperative countries (blacklist) on February 21, 2020.