TEHRAN – The Guardian Council has done its job with regard to the Palermo bill, Abbasali Kadkhodaei, the spokesman for the council, said on Wednesday. 

“The faults found by the Guardian Council were reflected to the Majlis and they were addressed, but the Expediency Council’s Supervisory Board has some comments on the issue, which should be addressed by the Majlis,” Kadkhodaei said at a press conference.

“We have investigated the shortcomings and faults in the Palermo bill, which have been fixed so our job is complete,” he said, according to Iran Press.

“The procedure of dealing in the Expediency Council has nothing to do with the Guardian Council, and you should ask the Expediency Council about it,” he told reporters.

“Palermo has been in that body for a long time, and the Guardian Council has no task on the issue anymore. Of course, what is being announced by the council about Palermo is definitely right,” the spokesman concluded.

The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) announced last month that it had given Iran a final deadline of February 2020 to tighten its laws against money laundering in compliance with the global watchdog’s financial standards.

“If before February 2020, Iran does not enact the Palermo and Terrorist Financing Conventions in line with the FATF Standards, then the FATF will fully lift the suspension of counter-measures and call on its members and urge all jurisdictions to apply effective counter-measures, in line with recommendation 19,” the FATF said in a statement, according to Reuters.

It added, “The FATF expects Iran to proceed swiftly in the reform path to ensure that it addresses all of the remaining items by completing and implementing the necessary Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing reforms.”

One of the actions Iran is required to take to appease the FATF is joining the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), which is also called the Palermo Convention, a 2000 United Nations-sponsored multilateral treaty against transnational organized crime.

The other action is to ratify the CFT, the convention combatting financing of terrorism.

On October 7, 2018, the parliament voted in favor of the CFT. However, the oversight Guardian Council rejected the bill by finding 22 faults with it, which put the fate of the bill on the hands of the Expediency Council.

MH/PA