Islamabad: The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global organization that monitors money laundering and terrorist financing, has kept Pakistan in the ‘Grey List’ and Islamabad as its financial institution. The remaining deficiencies in the system have been asked to be rectified at the earliest. This information has been given in the news on Saturday.
Pakistan has been on the gray list of the Paris-based FATF since June 2018 for failing to curb money laundering and terror financing. It was given an action plan to meet the set targets by October 2019. Pakistan has remained on that ‘grey list’ since then for failing to comply with the orders of the FATF.
According to the news of the newspaper ‘The Dawn’, despite meeting 32 out of 34 points of the action plan, it has been decided to keep Pakistan on the ‘grey list’ in the concluding session of the supplementary meeting of FATF on Friday. However, it was commended in the concluding session of the FATF supplementary meeting for Pakistan’s strong program on its global commitments to fight financial crimes.
Significantly, in October 2021, the FATF had acknowledged Pakistan’s progress on 26 points of its 27-point action plan but approved the investigation and prosecution of terrorism financing against top cadres of terror groups banned by the United Nations (UN). It retained Islamabad on its gray list (highly monitored list). The FATF also acknowledged that Pakistan has also fulfilled the seven action plan points of the Asia Pacific Group (APG) on money laundering. It said the recent action plan for 2021 received from APG was mainly focused on money laundering and it had found serious loopholes in its implementation.
The FATF acknowledged that Pakistan has done a good job against the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) in addition to its anti-money laundering operations, the report said. The FATF asked Pakistan to take action against terrorists and commanders of UN-designated terrorist groups in cases of terrorism financing investigations at the earliest. Pakistan has so far avoided joining the FATF blacklist with the help of close allies such as China, Turkey, and Malaysia. However, staying on the gray list is making it increasingly difficult for Islamabad to access funding from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the European Union, adding to the country’s economic problems. have been
