PARIS, October 25. /TASS/. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has avoided putting Russia on its penalty lists, as follows from the final communique issued at the end of the FATF plenary session in Paris.

FATF penalty lists include financially unreliable countries. The organization found no objective reasons for blacklisting Russia, which has repeatedly confirmed its full and diligent compliance with all its obligations as a member country.

However, the FATF upheld the decision to suspend Russia's membership made in 2023 amid the ongoing Ukrainian conflict. As Russia’s financial watchdog stated in response to this decision, the suspension of membership does not entail any obligations or restrictions for financial institutions in Russia or abroad. The watchdog also emphasized that Russia's anti-money laundering system continued to function effectively and the financial intelligence agency was building up international cooperation with the countries concerned.

The possibility of Russia being included in the FATF penalty 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 in the FATF blacklist would discredit the organization and cause it to fall apart.

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