Turkey to toughen law on crypto assets

Turkey is preparing new legislation covering crypto-assets to persuade an international crime watchdog to remove it from a "grey list" of countries that have taken insufficient action to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) downgraded Turkey to a so-called grey list in 2021. Addressing a parliamentary commission late on Tuesday, Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said a FATF report found Turkey fully compliant with all but one of the watchdog's 40 standards.

"The only remaining issue within the scope of technical compliance is the work related to crypto assets," Simsek said.

"We will submit a law proposal on crypto-assets to the parliament as soon as possible. After that, there will be no reason for Turkey to stay in that grey list, if there are no other political considerations."

Simsek gave no further details of the planned legal changes.

The FATF, set up by the G7 group of advanced economies to protect the global financial system, had warned Turkey about "serious shortcomings" including the need to improve measures to freeze assets linked to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction proliferation in 2019.