FATF avoids placing Russia on its criminal lists – World

PARIS, October 25. /TASS/. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has avoided including Russia on the criminal list, as evidenced by the final communiqué issued at the end of the FATF plenary session in Paris.

The FATF sanctions lists include financially unreliable countries. The organization found no objective reasons to blacklist Russia, which has repeatedly confirmed that it fully and scrupulously complies with all its obligations as a Member State.

However, the FATF maintained the decision to suspend Russia’s 2023 membership amid the ongoing Ukrainian conflict. As Russia’s financial watchdog stated in response to this decision, the suspension of membership does not impose any obligations or restrictions on financial institutions in Russia or abroad. The watchdog also emphasized that Russia’s anti-money laundering system continued to function effectively and that the Financial Intelligence Service was building international cooperation with the countries involved.

The possibility of Russia being included on the FATF sanctions lists was reported in October by the European edition of the newspaper Politico.

Earlier, French economist and academic Jacques Sapir, the head of the Paris-based Higher School of Social Sciences (Ecole Superieure des Sciences Sociales), told TASS that Russia’s inclusion on the FATF blacklist would discredit the organization and would cause it to fall apart.

The FATF is an intergovernmental organization that develops global standards in the field of combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism and assesses whether national systems meet these standards. It was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in Paris.