Six million bank accounts used for money laundering and goods smuggling have been monitored and blocked, the head of Iran’s Headquarters for Combating Smuggling of Commodities and Foreign Currency said.
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Ali Moayyedi added that the accounts were owned by natural and legal entities as well as foreign nationals residing in Iran.
“Over two million accounts owned by natural entities and three million accounts used by legal entities have been blocked,” Fars News Agency quoted him as saying.
Moayyedi noted that in the first phase, the suspicious accounts were identified and then blocked as of 2013, in cooperation with the Central Bank of Iran.
The official said out of 582,000 accounts previously held by foreigners, barely 10,000 accounts are operating at present.
“In some cases, these accounts were in the name of two-year-old children or even infants, which were used for money laundering and for transferring the earnings of smuggled goods,” he said.
“In line with its mission to combat criminal groups and fight money laundering activities pertaining to goods smuggling, foreign currency and drugs, the headquarters stepped up efforts in tandem with CBI to ascertain the identity of all owners of suspicious bank accounts.”
Moayyedi also declared that the identification of bank employees involved in opening such accounts is also on the agenda of the headquarters.
The move is in line with recent steps taken by Iran to join anti-money laundering initiative by approving bills that comply with the statutes of the Financial Action Task Force, the global anti-money laundering watchdog.
Tehran has already signed into law two of the anti-money laundering bills that update and amend existing legislation on terror financing and money laundering.
The watchdog decided in mid-June to continue the suspension of countermeasures against Iran until October, allowing Iran another four months to meet international standards for tackling money-laundering and terror financing.
