Speaking on a televised interview Friday night, a member of the Expediency Council, Hossein Mozaffar, said the Council would give its final verdict on the two controversial FATF-related bills, namely the convention against the funding of terrorism (CFT) and the one joining the UN Convention on Transnational Crime (Palermo bill), before FATF’s extended June deadline runs out.
The bills have already been approved by the lawmakers in the Iranian Parliament and need to gain the approval of the Expediency Council after they were rejected by the Guardian Council.
“The kind of transparency that FATF seeks in the Palermo bill is to find out our ways for bypassing sanctions. For a country under sanctions, it is a very unwise move to show our hands and let them see and block all our strategies,” the EC member maintained.
While the Parliament and the Rouhani administration have been more or less in favor of joining the FATF, the Guardian Council and Expediency Council have had their own concerns.
Mozaffar said that those in favor of joining the FATF had failed to come up with a strong argument as to why joining the body would be economically beneficial to Iran.
“We will never get on the FATF’s white list, because the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia will vote against us. On the other hand, we will not get on the body’s blacklist, because there are other countries that are on our sides because of their own national interests. Our situation will remain as it is,” Mozaffar added.
He also maintained that the overwhelming majority of the Expediency Council is against ratifying the two FATF-related bills.
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