Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Derecho Público "Dr. Humberto J. La Roche"
de la Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Políticas de la Universidad del Zulia
Maracaibo, Venezuela
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Vol. 39, Nº 68 (Enero - Junio) 2021, 344-360
IEPDP-Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Políticas - LUZ
Iran’s criminal policy towards
money laundering in the country’s
banking system
DOI: https://doi.org/10.46398/cuestpol.3969.21
Leila Forouzan Far *
Abstract
Using the documentary research methodology, the aim of
the article was to study Iran’s criminal policy towards money
laundering in its banking system. A number of measures have been
taken in the Iranian legal system to combat money-laundering,
the most important of which is the adoption of the anti-money-
laundering law in 2007 and its executive regulations in 2009.
With the enactment of this law, the crime of money laundering
ocially entered the Iranian legal system with its own special
and independent title. By way of conclusion, it is evident that
various governmental and judicial institutions have made the ght against
money-laundering one of their main objectives and tasks. Meanwhile, the
role of the National Audit Oce has also been prominent, and it has made
numerous eorts, both nationally and internationally, to identify cases of
money laundering, eliminate money laundering and ultimately combat it
eectively and eciently.
Keywords: money laundering; economic and nancial crimes; elements
of the oence of money-laundering; prevention of the crime;
criminal policy.
* Graduated in private law from Allameh Mohaddes Noor University,Noor Iran. ORCID ID: https://
orcid.org/0000-0002-3947-6925. Email: frozanfar2@yahoo.com
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La política criminal de Irán hacia el blanqueo de
dinero en el sistema bancario del país
Resumen
Mediante la metodología de investigación documental, el objetivo del
artículo fue estudiar la política criminal de Irán hacia el blanqueo de dinero
en su sistema bancario. En el ordenamiento jurídico iraní se han adoptado
varias medidas para combatir el blanqueo de capitales, la más importante de
las cuales es la aprobación de la ley contra el blanqueo de capitales en 2007
y su reglamento ejecutivo en 2009. Con la sanción de esta ley, el delito de
El blanqueo de dinero entró ocialmente en el sistema jurídico iraní con su
propio título especial e independiente. A modo de conclusión se evidencia
que diversas instituciones gubernamentales y judiciales han hecho de la
lucha contra el blanqueo de dinero uno de sus principales objetivos y tareas.
Mientras tanto, el papel de la Ocina Nacional de Auditoría también ha
sido prominente, y ha realizado numerosos esfuerzos, tanto a nivel nacional
como internacional, para identicar casos de lavado de dinero, eliminar
el lavado de dinero y, en última instancia, combatirlo de manera ecaz y
eciente.
Palabras clave: blanqueo de dinero; delitos económicos y nancieros;
elementos del delito de blanqueo de dinero; prevención
del delito; política criminal.
Introduction
Money laundering is on top of other criminal activities in the nancial
sector. This phenomenon is a process during which criminal and illegal
activities are placed in legal channels and puried in a seemingly process.
Money laundering is a three-step process, the rst of which is to sever any
direct link between the crime and the proceeds of illicit origin.
The second stage is to hide the rejection of property by conducting
transactions and the third stage is to give legal appearance to the property
obtained from the crime. Banks are one of the main channels for money
laundering for criminals; this is done through three ways of placing illegal
income in the nancial system and the Chinese layer and integrating it.
Such activities are carried out through ocial banking services, deposits,
transfers, and illegal schemes, using bank credits, and the bank’s employees
or managers may cooperate in some way.
Although banking supervisors around the world do not have the same
responsibilities and goals to combat money laundering, the prohibition
of abusing the banking system for illegal activities should be one of their
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Iran’s criminal policy towards money laundering in the country’s banking system
main responsibilities and goals. Such authorities are obliged to reform
their activities, and the capacity of banks to ban operators from using their
services must be strengthened. In this regard, training of employees and
their familiarity with money-laundering methods and its identication
methods and the banking system’s policy in dealing with this nancial
crime have a great impact on the eective ght against this phenomenon.
Overall, It is essential to provide special training to bank employees
who are more exposed to criminal money-laundering activities. These
individuals must be familiar with the relevant laws and regulations and
have the necessary ability to identify and detect suspicious transactions and
activities.
1. The concept of money laundering
Given the nature of money laundering, which is multidimensional and
wide-ranging, it is dicult to provide a precise denition of this crime (Naja
Abrandabadi and Hashembeigi, 1998; Abbasi, 2012) Jerey Robinson has
interpreted the crime of money laundering as follows: This is like a stone
being thrown into a pool; you see the moment the stone enters the water,
because the water shakes at that point. When the rock falls, waves are seen
for a moment and you can nd the point where the rock fell into the water,
but the more the stone sinks, the more the water wave disappears until
the stone reaches the bottom of the pond and no traces of it remain, and
it may be impossible to nd the stone. This is exactly what happens with
laundered money (Abbasi, 2012).
2. Legal pillar
The origins of the ght against illicit wealth must be sought in Article 49
of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran of course, this does not
mean that this principle is considered a manifestation of the ght against
money laundering, but this principle can be the basis of the ght against
money laundering. In Iranian law, according to Article (2) of the Anti-
Money Laundering Law approved by the Islamic Consultative Assembly
in 2007, the crime of money laundering has been dened and legislated,
which is (Tamanaha, 2014).
- Acquisition, possession, maintenance or use of proceeds of illegal
activities with the knowledge that it was obtained directly or indirectly
because of a crime.
Conversion, exchange, or transfer of income in order to conceal its illegal
origin knowing that it is directly or indirectly caused by the commission of
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the crime or to assist the perpetrator in such a way that he is not subject to
the legal eects and consequences of the crime.
Concealment, concealment or concealment of the true nature, origin,
source, location, transfer, transfer, or ownership of income obtained
directly or indirectly as a result of a crime.
3. Penalty for money laundering
The proportion between crime and punishment is one of the principles
governing punishments; that is, the legislature in criminalizing the act
or intensifying the punishment should anticipate the most appropriate
reactions to the crime to have the greatest eect and deterrence the time
of execution and in practice. Whenever the purpose of punishment is to
make it useful, the legislator must measure the punishment’s eectiveness
and formulate the reaction of the society in the form of criminal laws in
proportion to the criminal behaviour and the damage it has caused to the
public order.
The rational approval and execution of punishments and the observance
of punishment’s proportionality with the crime can be eective in reducing
delinquency (Eslamian et al., 2020). The type and amount of punishment
is one of the factors that perpetrators usually consider and evaluate when
deciding to commit a crime. The criminal is a human accountant, so if the
study between prot and loss due to committing a crime is balanced and
more in favor of losses and costs, he usually gives up committing a crime;
unless he is a risk-taker (Soltanifard et al., 2018).
This highlights the importance of the legislature’s duty to ensure the
usefulness and appropriateness of money-laundering criminalization.
In the case of money laundering, the perpetrators’ greatest goal and
motivation is to achieve nancial benets. In this crime, the perpetrators
usually have a clinical social status; Therefore, it is necessary to determine
the punishments that seriously harm their interests (whether nancial
interests or social status).
The Iranian legislature, regardless of the principle of proportionality
between crime and punishment in Article 9 of the Anti-Laundering Law
(Siclari, 2016), has determined the punishment for money-laundering:
The perpetrators of money-laundering are sentenced to a ne of a quarter of
the proceeds of the crime, in addition to the recovery of the proceeds of crime and
the proceeds of the crime, including the principal and benets obtained and, if not
available, the like or its price (Siclari, 2016: 25).
This article of the anti-money laundering law is criticized for not
observing the balance between crime and punishment.
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Iran’s criminal policy towards money laundering in the country’s banking system
For, rst, one of the purposes of punishment is its deterrent aspect,
and intimidation has always had a special place in the legislature’s choice
of punishment. The intimidating aspect of punishment means that future
crimes are prevented by imposing punishments on the perpetrators. On
the other hand, non-criminals and those who intend to commit a crime
are intimidated and do not commit any more crimes, and the perpetrator
himself refuses to commit the crime again (Bohoslavsky and Cernic, 2014).
However, it seems that the punishment imposed for the crime of money
laundering is not a deterrent and, on the contrary, the imposition of a ne is
a great incentive for violators. Because if the payment of this amount is not
high for the criminals, and as long as the utility of corruption is higher than
the crime, the corrupters will continue to be stronger (Maleki and Rahimi,
2014).
According to the note of the mentioned article, if the proceeds of crime
are converted or changed into another property, the same property will
be conscated, and according to Note 2 of the same article, the issuance
and execution of a conscation order and the benets derived from it are
allowed if the accused has not been subject to this sentence in terms of
the crime of origin. In fact, these regulations point to the impossibility
of enforcing the seizure regulations in cases where the proceeds of crime
have been imposed due to the commission of the original crime. Therefore,
it cannot be re-recorded. Also, according to Note 3 of Article 9 of the
Anti-Money Laundering Law, the perpetrators of the crime of origin will
be sentenced to the punishments provided in this law in addition to the
prescribed punishments related to the crime if they commit the crime of
money-laundering (Siclari, 2016).
Since, according to the fundamental principles of domestic law, the
imposition of punishment for the principal oense is not in conict with
the imposition of a penalty for the oense of money laundering; both
punishments are imposed if one person commits these two oenses.
Whereas part (e) of paragraph 2 of Article 23 of the Convention states:
“If the fundamental principles of the domestic law of a Member State so
provide, that State may specify that the oenses set forth in paragraph 1
of this article shall not apply to persons who have committed the principal
oense” (Born, 1994: 19).
4. Identify criminal liability for legal entities
The fact is that today many crimes such as fraud, crimes and violations
of corporate law are often committed by individuals and under the auspices
of legal entities or a company. Therefore, it is expedient that in addition to
the criminal responsibility of the representatives of these persons, at least
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for the execution of nancial penalties, especially if the representatives of
the company are poor, there should be criminal liability of legal persons.
Thus, under the inuence of judicial considerations and criminological
facts, the contemporary doctrine agrees with legal persons’ criminal liability.
Recognizing that groups are always involved in transnational organized
crime, these groups can be registered in the government or even as public
law entities. Legal entities are a good cover for criminal groups. Maa
gangs formally establish some companies and legal entities to help commit
organized crime and launder the proceeds. The need to combat these
crimes requires the acceptance of criminal liability by legal persons. This
issue is accepted in the mentioned international documents. Considering
that in the past, in all international documents and international criminal
courts, the procedure has always been to prosecute natural persons and not
to accept the criminal responsibility of legal persons, this is a signicant
and innovative development.
However, in Iranian criminal law, the criminal liability of legal entities
has not been accepted yet, and even in cases where the legislator has been
in a position to express him, he has not wanted to impose criminal liability
on legal entities. For example, in Article 568 of the Islamic Penal Code, the
legislator, although in the position of expressing crimes committed by legal
entities, has accepted only the criminal responsibility of natural persons
(Sadeghi et al., 2012; Iran: Islamic Penal Code, 1991). For this reason,
the money-laundering law criminalizes legal entities that commit money-
laundering, regardless of international recommendations in this area. Note
3 of Article 4 of the said law stipulate:
All executive by-laws of the above-mentioned council shall be binding on all
relevant natural and legal persons after the approval of the Council of Ministers.
The violator will be sentenced to two to ve years of dismissal from the relevant
service, as the case may be, at the discretion of the administrative and judicial
authorities.
5. Judicial solutions
The legal solutions that can be enforced in dealing with money laundering
are as follows:
5.1 Facilitate crime detection and proof
a. Acceptance of criminal records
One of the most important and innovative solutions supported in
international documents to combat money-laundering, overturning the
principle of criminal innocence. The principle of innocence is one of the
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Iran’s criminal policy towards money laundering in the country’s banking system
basic principles governing the course of criminal proceedings, according
to which every innocent person is presumed, and if he is charged with
presumption of innocence, the prosecutor’s oce must prove his guilt.
Despite the place that this principle has in criminal matters and governs
other principles and rules of criminal law, however, in certain cases of
application of this principle of transgression, and despite the fact that
the principle is innocence, and the prosecuting authority must prove the
material and spiritual elements of the crime, and the accused is not obliged
to prove his innocence, the task of presenting the reason is shifted and falls
on the accused.
The basis for deviating from the principle of innocence is, in many
cases, the very basis that justies the rule of the principle of innocence
in criminal matters.in other words , Just as legal justice requires that the
accused be acquitted in the absence of evidence, innocence and innocence,
In special cases, where the existence of evidence strengthens the suspicion
of committing a crime by the accused, the requirement of legal justice and
public interests is the precedence of the principle of guilt over the principle
of innocence (Eslamian, et al., 2020).
b. Using informants and special research techniques
One of the methods proposed in the Palermo Convention to detect and
prove organized crime, including money laundering, is the use of informants.
Money-laundering research is based on the development of information,
including intelligence (Standing, 2010). Educating and training informants
is very important in pursuing money laundering. Informants may be
airport employees who become aware of the unusual transfer of money
in and out of the country. Alternatively, are secret members of the police
who gather news in the course of their mission; for example, undercover
agents in search of money-laundering services or money launderers who
want to exchange illicit money for criminals are replaced as criminals?
Alternatively, he may be a criminal himself who has repented and is trying
to give his information to the legal authorities.
Given the diculties in inltrating criminal gangs and detecting and
arresting them, these remorseful criminals’ information is very important.
Of course, these informants can sometimes report false information as
well, in order to mislead the police in nding the trust in the reports. In
any case, these criminals have expectations for any cooperation with law
enforcement ocers. For this reason, Article 26 of the Palermo Convention,
entitled “Measures to increase cooperation with law enforcement agencies”
was adopted. It also urges member states to take action , to encourage
individuals and members of organized crime groups to provide useful
information about the details, The nature, composition, structure, location,
activities of these groups and their relationships with other groups, crimes
committed or may be committed by these groups as well as to provide
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concrete and documented assistance to law enforcement agencies that
could deprive criminal groups of material resources or proceeds of crime.
c. Conscation and conscation of property
As mentioned earlier, conscation has been emphasized in all
international instruments as a guarantee of eective performance in
money-laundering , and countries have been asked to consider this in
their domestic law in response to money-laundering , as a result, it is the
duty of the judiciary to sentence the oender to this punishment in order
to implement these laws , and in order to carry out this punishment, they
should use all the necessary facilities to provide a good nancial source while
punishing the criminals, which can be spent on ghting crimes. Conscated
property includes property that is directly derived from the commission of
a crime or we in return for it.
That is, if this income is consumed or lost in any way, the equivalent will
be conscated from the property of the oender , and if it has been converted
or altered into another property, the property shall be conscated instead
of the proceeds (paragraph 3 of Article 12 of the Palermo Convention).This
provision ensures that, rst, the concealment or replacement or destruction
of the same property resulting from the crime does not interfere with the
conscation operation , and secondly, it makes it possible to seize legal
property, that is, the oender is liable for the equivalent of property
resulting from the crime, even if he has lost the original illegal property.
Appropriable property also includes indirect proceeds of crime. That
is, income or other benets derived from the proceeds of crime or from
property to which the proceeds of crime have been converted shall be
conscated in the same way as direct proceeds of crime. The rules also
include the conscation of property, equipment or other items that have
been or will be used to commit a crime, and if this income is mixed with the
property obtained through legal means, the said property will be conscated
up to the approximate amount of the mixed income.
Therefore, contrary to Iranian domestic law, other perpetrators’ property
that has nothing to do with the crime cannot be conscated. Therefore,
if a vehicle is dedicated to smuggling, it can be conscated However, the
house or other property of the perpetrator that has nothing to do with the
crime and is legally acquired and not used for the crime can’t be conscated
(Salimi, 2007).
6. Methods of Prevention of crime, money laundering
Prevention is a general concept and refers to a set of actions that
are taken to prevent and prevent harmful interactions suered by the
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Iran’s criminal policy towards money laundering in the country’s banking system
individual and the group, such as prevention of work accidents, prevention
of youth delinquency and prevention of accidents on the roads, etc. Naja
abrandabadi writes about the word prevention:
The word prevention today in its current and common sense has two
dimensions. To prevent means to overtake, to overtake, and to move forward,
and to warn, to warn, and to warn. But in preventive criminology, prevention is
used in its rst sense, that is, the use of various techniques in order to prevent the
occurrence of delinquency, the goal is to prevent crime and surpass delinquency
(Naja and Hakimipour, 2018).
In this section, the important strategies of Prevention of crime, money-
laundering are examined:
6.1 Customer identication
Customer identication is the identication and verication of customer
identity using independent, credible, and reliable information sources,
documents and data. Customer identication is divided into two groups of
actions including “initial identication” and “complete identication”. The
purpose of initial identication is to match and conrm the specications
stated by the client with the identication documents and in case of action
by the representative or lawyer, in addition to registering the details of the
lawyer or representative, the original registration. Full identication also
refers to the accurate identication of the customer, including the initial
identication items in addition to the recognition of the job status, Field
of activity and managers of legal entities, income, education, exact address
of residence and work and estimation of the level of nancial relations of
the client and .... When providing basic services (Aluko and Bagheri, 2012).
6.2. Maintaining information and records
Financial institutions should keep records of their domestic and
international transactions in such a way that they could respond to requests
for information from competent authorities in the shortest possible time.
Record keeping as a solution to crime prevention, money laundering is
also envisaged in Iranian law. In paragraph (d) of Article 7 of the Anti-
Money Laundering Law (2007) (Siclari, 2016). The legislator has obliged
the persons, institutions, and bodies subject to this law, according to their
type of activity and organizational structure, to keep records related to
the identication of the client, records of accounts and operations and
transactions for the period specied in the executive regulations.
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6.3. Report suspicious transactions
Suspicious operations and transactions are transactions and operations
in which individuals suspect that they have money-laundering operations
in the possession of information or logical evidence, and logical evidence
refers to the conditions and requirements that compel a normal human
being to investigate the origin of property and deposits or other related
operations (Aluko and Bagheri, 2012). Reporting suspicious transactions
as a Prevention of crime, money-laundering solution is also included in the
laws of many other countries.
In April 1999, for example, a new anti-money laundering law was
enacted in Switzerland, which required banks to report suspicious accounts
to the government and then block those accounts. This law also includes
non-banking institutions, such as insurance, law rms.
In Iranian law, in paragraph (c) of Article 7 of the Law on Combating
Money-laundering, the legislator is obliged to report the persons, institutions
and bodies subject to this law (subject to Articles 5 and 6) according to
the type of activity and organizational structure, which includes suspicious
transactions and operations to a competent authority designed by the High
Council for Combating Money-Laundering. Article 25 (Chapter 4) of the
Executive Regulations of the Anti-Money Laundering Law also states: “All
employees under the authority of the persons involved are obliged to report
suspicious transactions and operations (subject to paragraphs” and “Article
1) without informing the client to the units responsible for combating
money-laundering in each device. In the absence of this unit, the highest
authority of the person involved will be responsible for receiving reports
and taking appropriate action (Eslamian et al., 2020).
Reporting suspicious transactions as a Prevention of crime, money-
laundering solution is also included in the laws of many other countries.
In April 1999, for example, a new anti-money laundering law was enacted
in Switzerland, which required banks to report suspicious accounts to the
government and then block those accounts. This law also includes non-
banking institutions, such as insurance, law rms (Naja and Hakimipour,
2018). In Iranian law, in paragraph (c) of Article 7 of the Law on Combating
Money-laundering, the legislator is obliged to report suspicious transactions
and operations to the persons, institutions and agencies covered by this
law (subject to Articles 5 and 6) according to their type of activity and
organizational structure.
The competent authority designated by the High Council for Combating
Money-Laundering. Article 25 (Chapter 4) of the Executive Regulations of
the Anti-Money Laundering Law also states: Refer to the units responsible
for combating money laundering in each device. In the absence of this unit,
the highest authority of the person involved will be responsible for receiving
reports and taking appropriate action (Eslamian et al., 2020).
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Iran’s criminal policy towards money laundering in the country’s banking system
6.3. Adopting supervisory measures on nancial and banking
operations
Because criminals often launder the proceeds of their criminal activities
by using the services and facilities of banks and nancial institutions,
therefore, one of the most important measures to prevent money-laundering
is the establishment of a comprehensive system of internal supervision and
control for banks and non-bank nancial organizations that provide services
for the transfer of money and valuables, which within its competence to
prevent and detect all Money-laundering forms will try to maintain records,
report suspicious transactions and identify customers, etc.
Adoption of supervisory measures on nancial and banking operations
has also been considered as one of the solutions for the prevention of crime,
money-laundering in Iranian law. Article 18 of the Anti-Money Laundering
Law states: Persons subject to the law and the board of directors of non-
nancial trade unions are required to nominate a unit to the Secretariat
responsible for combating money laundering, given the size of their
organization.
The head of the unit must be selected from the managers of the persons
involved. The Secretariat may, if necessary, review the qualications of
the members of the said unit, based on the importance of the unit. Note
1: All eligible persons are obliged to make the necessary arrangements in
accordance with the scope of their organization in such a way as to ensure
the necessary implementation of the laws and regulations related to the
ght against money laundering. Persons covered by paragraph 1 of a
regulation are all natural and legal persons subject to Articles 5 and 6 of
the law, including the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, banks,
nancial and credit institutions, stock exchanges, insurance companies,
central insurance, loan funds. Al-Hasna, charities and municipalities,
as well as notaries, lawyers, auditors, accountants, forensic experts, and
statutory inspectors (Abbasi, 2012).
6.4. Training the sta of the institution to identify and deal with
money laundering
Training sta to identify and combat money-laundering Sta training
and familiarity with money-laundering methods and methods of identifying
it, as well as the institution’s policy in dealing with this nancial crime,
has a great impact on the eective ght against this phenomenon. It is
essential to provide special training to those employees of the organization
who are more exposed to criminal money-laundering activities. These
individuals should be familiar with the relevant laws and regulations and
have the necessary ability to identify and detect suspicious transactions and
activities. In other words, the ocials of an institution should teach the
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methods of dealing with money laundering to the employees of the parts of
the institution that are exposed to this phenomenon. These trainings should
include methods for identifying suspicious transactions, related rules and
regulations, and reporting requirements.
The institution’s policy in the ght against money laundering should be in
the form of sta waste. In general, nancial institutions need to ensure that
their employees are aware of their role in combating money laundering. In
addition, the institution should identify those sta that need more periodic
training. Apart from the group of employees who are particularly engaged
in the ght against money-laundering, the other units of the institution
that need training are: administrative and nancial units, accounting and
auditing units, credit department, security, inspection and complaints
department and department Legal. Sta training may be done through a
variety of executive activities, including lectures, training videos, network
and computer training, or other methods. In addition, the distribution of
reports and training booklets is very eective in training all employees
or a specic group of them. The development of the training program of
the institute can be entrusted to the legal, auditing and human resources
departments, and the institutes are obliged to keep the documents related
to their educational activities.
Financial institutions should tailor anti-money laundering chapters and
training materials to their activities. To this end, topics such as customer
identication methods, suspicious activity criteria, reporting principles
and regulations, especially in foreign exchange transactions, how to move
nancial documents and money-laundering criminal and civil penalties,
should be included in the chapters and training materials. Article 35 of
the By-Laws of the Anti-Money-Laundering Law of Iran states: All eligible
persons are obliged, in cooperation with the Secretariat, to make the
necessary arrangements for the establishment of training courses at the
beginning of the service and during the service of their subordinate sta.
These courses should be in order to get acquainted with the law, regulations
and related instructions, how money launderers operate and especially the
latest tricks of money launderers in using the services of persons involved
and how to eliminate the criminal origin. It is necessary to complete the
mentioned courses in order to continue the service of the employees of the
persons involved in the relevant jobs, and the records of the mentioned
courses must be recorded in the personnel le.
6.5. Control and supervision over foreign currencies
Currency control policies should be used with sucient caution to
combat money-laundering, because this policy is like a double-edged sword,
which on the one hand makes it dicult for money launderers to transfer
money, and on the other hand, the implementation of this policy leads to
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Iran’s criminal policy towards money laundering in the country’s banking system
the creation of parallel markets and a black market, can easily be exploited
by money launderers. Therefore, instead of retreating and restricting their
nancial and currency systems, governments need to take measures to
be at the forefront of nancial markets and to monitor foreign exchange
transactions. One of these methods is the use of regulatory methods to
prevent money laundering by government ocials. Another way is to give
anti-money laundering training to bank and exchange sta. The technical
assistance of the International Monetary Fund can also be used for this
purpose.
6.6. International cooperation to combat money laundering
and use the experiences of other countries
As we know, Iran is at the beginning of the ght against money laundering,
and it is necessary to gain enough experience in this regard. That is why it is
necessary to use the experiences of countries that have fought this crime for
many years and have achieved useful results. In Iranian law, in Article 37
of the Anti-Money-Laundering Law, the legislator has made the exchange
of information to international organizations and institutions, as well as
the collection and acquisition of international experiences, the duties of
the Secretariat in the Ministry of Economic Aairs and Finance (Aluko and
Bagheri, 2012).
The signatories of the Merida Convention state in Article 14, paragraph
4, of the Merida Convention that States Parties are required to use
initiatives of regional, international, and multilateral organizations against
money laundering (Ayyoub, 2019). Article 5 also states that Member States
shall endeavour to expand global, regional, sub-regional and bilateral co-
operation between judicial, law enforcement and nancial regulators to
combat money laundering. As can be seen, international cooperation to
combat money laundering is enshrined in both Iranian law and the Merida
Convention as a preventive measure against money laundering.
6.7. Supervising the property and assets of government ocials
and ocials
Another eective way to prevent crime, money laundering, is to monitor
the property and assets of government ocials. Supervision of property
and assets means monitoring the legitimacy of their property. This means
that the means of owning property must be based on legal and sharia rules
and criteria, and individuals must not have acquired their property illegally
or illegally according to the situations and opportunities provided to them
due to their tenure. This indirect approach to money laundering requires
that high-ranking government ocials and ocials, in accordance with the
law, submit a list of their property and assets to the agency or institution
that is required by law to deal with these matters within specied times
(Fakher et al., 2018).
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6.8. Preventing the creation of virtual banks
Since nancial and monetary exchanges are an integral part of commercial
exchanges, in today’s world, and especially in developed countries,
along with the expansion of the volume of electronics due to extensive
developments in ICT, monetary and nancial institutions have also found
to support, and E-commerce facilitation should make extensive use of ICT.
That is why electronic payment and exchange systems have been evolving
over the last few decades. Meanwhile, banks, as monetary intermediaries,
have to move to e banking and oer new nancial services in all new areas,
including e-commerce, and this attitude is the basis for the formation of
virtual banks. The purpose of virtual banking is to use advanced software
and hardware technologies based on network and telecommunications to
exchange resources and nancial information of customers electronically,
which can eliminate the need for physical presence of customers in bank
branches.
The use of centralized computer systems, no time and space constraints
for banking operations, high security and the ability to track banking
operations and increase speed and eciency, are features that make the
necessity of establishing virtual banks in today’s world inevitable (Aluko
and Bagheri, 2012).
Conclusion
In general, money laundering is any act or attempt to conceal or alter
the identity of illicit income in such a way that it appears to have originated
from legal sources. In other words, money laundering is the process
by which the shape, origin, characteristics, type, beneciaries or nal
destination of contaminated money changes. Measures taken in advanced
nancial markets to identify and prosecute money-laundering cases
have shifted criminal activity to less developed markets (in terms of the
nancial system). money-laundering generally consists of three basic steps:
placement; Injecting dirty money into the monetary and nancial system of
the second stage of the porcelain layer; Isolation of the relationship between
illicit income and their source or existing activities and the third stage of
integration; Giving legal appearance to the wealth from illegal income. Two
dierent perspectives on money laundering, the European perspective, and
the American perspective, can be identied.
The European approach leaves banks and other nancial institutions
free to assess suspicious cases, if such matters relating to money-laundering
operations are notied to the competent authorities. On the other hand, the
American attitude forces these institutions to disclose information about
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Iran’s criminal policy towards money laundering in the country’s banking system
any transfer or trade of more than ten thousand dollars. In general, in
Iran, providing the necessary legal, regulatory and executive framework to
identify and block the channels of inltration of dirty money into the ocial
nancial network of the national economy is of fundamental importance.
In an intelligent anti-money laundering system, there are several
independent agents, each of which acts on its own duty and interacts with
other agents to identify suspicious money-laundering activity, so that
they can carry out the activity that has Detect money-laundering risk and
automatically generate a suspicious activity report on money-laundering.
Now, considering that Bank Melli Iran has a large volume of banking
transactions in the country and considering the benets of intelligent anti-
money laundering system, by providing suggestions for localization of
this system, tracking, and detecting the activities of money launderers in
all transactions. Financial transfers, its use in the National Bank of Iran
and the country’s banking system were suggested. However, the Iranian
legislature in the law against money-laundering and its executive regulations
have provided solutions in accordance with the Palermo Convention for
the prevention of crime, money-laundering and combating it, including
customer identication, record keeping and information , Reporting
suspicious transactions, establishing a nancial information unit, adopting
regulatory measures on nancial and banking operations, training the sta
of the institution to identify and deal with money-laundering, and so on.
However, as expected, the new preventive measures specic to this
emerging criminal phenomenon and envisaged in the Merida Convention,
such as the prohibition of the establishment of virtual banks, have not been
adopted in the anti-laundering law and it is appropriate that the legislature
Take action to ll this gap.
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Esta revista fue editada en formato digital y publicada
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Vol.39 Nº 69
