VIENNA, Va. — The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued advisories to banks and other financial institutions of serious deficiencies in the anti-money laundering systems of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Turkish Cypriot administered area of Cyprus, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The advisories stated:
In Uzbekistan, the government has taken legal action that undermines the jurisdiction of the anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism regime. Uzbekistan addressed the AML/CFT deficiencies by enacting an AML/CFT law that went into effect in January 2006. The government has now suspended implementation of the law until Jan. 1, 2013 through a series of decrees.
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The northern third of Turkey, which is under the control of a Turkish Cypriot administration that proclaimed itself the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus," has existing AML/CFT deficiencies despite the establishment of an anti-money laundering committee. With the committee, the Turkish Cypriot administered area continues to lack an operational financial intelligence unit and new legislation intended to fix these deficiencies has not been fully implemented.
Iran has AML/CFT deficiencies that are intensified by the government's attempts to conduct prohibited related activity and terrorist financing. The Iranian financial sector, including the Central Bank of Iran, was identified by the Financial Action Task Force and the United Nations Security Council as an increasing risk to the international financial system. Iran's central bank and Iranian commercial banks requested that their names be removed from global transactions in order to make it more difficult for intermediary financial institutions to determine the true parties in a transaction.
FinCEN urged financial institutions to use enhanced scrutiny to any transaction with a financial institution in any of those countries. FinCEN also reminded U.S. financial institutions of the existing sanctions that are administered by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control with respect to Iran and the government of Iran. Information on these sanctions is available on OFAC's Web site http://www.treasury.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/.
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