https://www.agbi.com/banking-finance/2025/01/iraq-lowers-ceiling-to-crack-down-on-money-laundering/

Iraq is slashing the ceiling of the value of property transactions that require dealers to make disclosure to the authorities.

The Central Bank’s decision on Thursday is the latest in a series of measures taken by the Opec member over the past few years to tighten its grip on the local market and to combat money laundering, in response to repeated demands by the US and its Western allies.

In a circular published by Al Iqtisad News and other Iraqi publications, the Central Bank said it was reducing an existing ceiling of 500 million Iraqi dinars ($382,000) to 100 million dinars ($76,000).

War-battered Iraq, Opec’s second largest oil producer, introduced the curbs on property transactions in mid-2024 as part of its first anti-laundering law introduced in 2015.

The circular was sent to banks operating in Iraq on Thursday, according to the report, which said it is “part of legislations against money laundering and terror funding”.

“The Central Bank of Iraq wishes to inform you that it has decided to reduce the ceiling of the value of property governed by the anti-money laundering and terror combating law from 500 million to 100 million dinars,” the report said.

Parliament passed Iraq’s first anti-laundering and terror funding law in 2015 following an increase in suspect financial transactions.

According to that law, persons convicted of such acts include those who are involved in transferring, moving or exchanging funds from a person who knows or should have known that they are proceeds of a crime, for the purpose of concealing or disguising their illegal source or helping the perpetrators.

They also include those concealing funds or disguising their source, location, method of disposition, transfer, ownership or rights related to them, from a person who knows or should have known that they are proceeds of a crime.

Penalties in that law include up to 15 years in jail and a fine of up to five times the value of the suspected transaction.

In response to these measures, in 2022 the EU decided to remove Iraq from the list of high-risk countries in the field of money laundering and terror funding.

In a letter to Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, then Iraqi prime minister, the EU Commission “congratulated Iraq on the great measures and efforts that have been taken to improve the anti-money laundering system and combat the financing of terrorism,” the official Iraqi news agency said at the time.