Prosecution and Proof of Money-Laundering in the Light of Iran’s Legislative-Judicial Criminal Policy and FATF Standards

In recent years, money-laundering offence has seen a surge in interest from the international community and the national legal systems as an important conduit for financing terrorism. Against this backdrop, FATF has formulated minimum standards and urged the states to comply with them, hoping to prevent and combat money-laundering while at the same time encouraging the countries to criminalize it in their domestic laws. Money-laundering takes place in a diverse variety of ways, and has many particularities. This has deeply troubled judicial authorities engaged in prosecution and proof of the offence. In 2018, the FATF set up an educational workshop to instruct judicial authorities from different countries on the imperative standards in judicial prosecution and proof of money-laundering. It also provided points on the issue of Mens rea and the modification of the principle of innocence and emphasized that proving money-laundering does not depend on proving the primary offence. In addition to explicating the standards mentioned above, this article aims to explore Iran’s legislative-judicial approach to criminal policy by the use of the descriptive-analytical method. It seeks to elucidate the extent to which current practices are in line with these standards, and also shed light on the existing drawbacks and lacunae. To achieve this goal, the principles and the framework of Iran’s criminal policy in Anti-Money Laundering Law adopted in 2008 (amended in 2018) and its executive guidelines, as well as consultative views of the legal department of the judiciary and a number of judgments of the courts of justice are discussed. The article then concludes that Iran’s legislative-judicial criminal policy has adhered to the FATF’s standards in some regards, while defying these standards in other cases, thereby creating drawbacks and lacunae, notably in judicial prosecution of money-laundering.