What actions has the Financial Information Center taken to improve transparency in the country's economy?

Positive FATF Signal from Central Asia

The annual report of the Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism (EAG) for the period 2024 to 2025 indicates that the cooperation of this group with the Islamic Republic of Iran has reached a strategic and operational stage.

Established in 1989 with the aim of globally combating money laundering and terrorist financing, it began publishing a list of "non-cooperative" countries and jurisdictions in 2000; a list that has become known in the media as the "blacklist." Countries on this list face severe FATF warnings due to strategic deficiencies in their regulatory systems, and global financial interactions with them are subject to restrictions and increased oversight. The FATF’s goal with such measures is to exert financial pressure and encourage countries to reform their legal frameworks and banking practices. The first FATF list was published in 2000 and included countries from the Caribbean, Oceania, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.
The name of Iran entered this list for the first time in February 2008.  At that time, FATF announced that although Iran has committed to reforming the anti-money laundering and terrorist financing system, it still has significant flaws and the world's financial institutions should take extra precautions in interacting with Iran.  In the following years, Iran was included in one of the most risky FATF groups, along with several other countries.  In 2012, Iran and North Korea were the only countries subject to "reciprocal measures";  FATF's highest warning level, which requires member countries to impose strict restrictions on financial interaction with these countries.
However, in the period from 2016 to 2019, a more constructive interaction between Iran and FATF took place.  In June 2016, FATF welcomed the approval of Iran's action plan and suspended the implementation of countermeasures for one year;  The suspension was extended in June 2017.  Despite this, part of Iran's commitments were not completed by the end of January 2018, and after several more opportunities, FATF finally put Iran on the highest warning level again from February 2020.  This situation aggravated banking pressures and restrictions on financial interactions and made cooperation with regional technical institutions such as EAG more important.
The "Comprehensive Plan for the Development of Technical Assistance to Iran" has recently been defined as one of the key priorities of the EAG, and its purpose is to improve the efficiency of Iran's national anti-money laundering and terrorist financing (AML/CFT) system and to align the country's domestic measures with the standards of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).  In the introduction of the report, Sergey Tetrukov, the executive secretary of EAG, mentions the three main pillars of the group's activities, including the development of countries' national systems, reducing regional risks, and strengthening multilateral cooperation.  From his point of view, the approval and start of implementation of Iran's special plan is a successful example of regional cooperation and a sign of mutual trust among the members of the Eurasian group.
The basis for the decision to provide this technical assistance was formed at the 41st General Meeting of the EAG in October 2024 in Indore, India.  In this meeting, the Iranian delegation led by Hadi Khani, the secretary of the Supreme Council for Prevention and Combating Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing, played an active role in explaining the needs and showing Iran's structural progress.  These efforts made all members of the group unanimously agree to provide technical assistance to Iran.  The two main goals of this assistance have been to support Iran to submit a progress report to the FATF International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) and to help the country leave the list of high-risk jurisdictions.
The next stage of this cooperation took place at the 42nd general meeting of the EAG in Moscow in May 2025;  Where the time frame and content details of the plan were officially approved.  This development is considered a transition from political consultation to operational and technical planning.  According to this plan, the EAG member countries were required to specify their specialized capacities to provide technical assistance, and the group's secretariat was also tasked with compiling the implementation roadmap for these assistance.  The annual report considers this decision as an indication of the increase in the prestige and international role of EAG, as well as the confidence of the members in the mechanism of this group to strengthen global standards.

Hadi Khani, the head of the Financial Intelligence Center, recently gave explanations about Iran's internal challenges in the field of combating money laundering.  He has mentioned: One of the serious problems of Iran is "form companies" and "rental accounts".