Iran, Russia Discuss Joint Efforts to Tackle Money Laundering

Iran and Russia have discussed how they can work together to tackle money laundering amid joint efforts between the two countries to minimize the impacts of foreign sanctions on their banking and financial sectors. IRNA news agency in a report has said that Iranian and Russian officials had met on the sidelines of the 36th Plenary Meeting of the Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism in Uzbekistan’s Tashkent. During the meeting, Yuri Chikhanchin, director of Russia’s Federal Service for Financial Monitoring, known as Rosfinmonitoring, made a case for increased cooperation with Iran on money laundering issues, said the report. Chikhanchin insisted that such cooperation will strengthen joint efforts by Iran and Russia to offset the economic impacts of sanctions imposed on them by the United States and allies, according to the IRNA’s report. Iran has been facing a raft of American sanctions since 2018 when Washington pulled out of an international deal on the country’s nuclear program.

Russia has come under a similar set of sanctions by the West since February when it got involved in a military conflict in Ukraine. Chikhanchin said that Iran and Russia had come closer to each other because of the sanctions and insisted they should share intelligence and technical expertise as well the physical infrastructure used to boost their crackdown on money laundering. He made his comments during a meeting with head of the Iranian finance ministry’s department for financial information Hadi Khani. Khani, for his part, welcomed the proposal for increased cooperation on financial monitoring issues between Iran and Russia, said the report by the IRNA. - Kayhan