WASHINGTON: The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) decided to keep Pakistanon its grey list following a meeting on money laundering in Paris onWednesday.
According to details, Pakistan’s interim Finance Minister Shamshad Akhtarpresented a strong case during the meeting, pleading Pakistan’s case toremove its name from the FATF grey list.
The minister apprised the anti-terror financing body of measures thatcountry has taken to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and toeliminate the terrorism from its soil.
The US motion, to have Pakistan added to the “grey list” of countries wasreportedly backed by Britain, France and Germany.
It was revealed that FATF finalised this decision asserting the countryfailed to take necessary measures against terror financing on its soil.
A Topline research report said, “the meeting will conclude with the thirdand final Plenary meeting on 27-29 Jun 2018, where they will officiallyplace Pakistan on the ‘Improving Global Anti Money Laundering (AML)/Countering Financing of Terrorism (CFT) compliance’ list also known as the‘grey’ list’.”
This list comprises of jurisdictions with strategic AML/CFT deficienciesfor which they have developed an action plan with the FATF.
Previously, a local media house reported a 26-point action plan has beendesigned spanning a period of 15 months to avoid being blacklisted by theFinancial Action Task Force (FATF).
The idea of the plan being passed is to stop the financing of terroristgroups like Da’ish and the Haqqani network.
Moreover, the discussion on the action plan began by the globalintergovernmental body working to combat money laundering and terroristfinancing.
The plan that the International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) of AsiaPacific Group (APG) submitted to the FATF Plenary also requires Pakistaniauthorities to proactively cooperate with counterpart bilateral agencies.
According to reports, the Ministry of Finance stated that Pakistan willhave to deliver on the first goal by January next year and complete all the26 actions by September 2019.
In February 2018, the FATF approved the nomination of Pakistan formonitoring under its International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) commonlyknown as Grey List.
The ICRG of the APG has identified four key areas of concerns, includingdeficiencies in the supervision of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) andCounter-Terrorism Financing regimes, cross-border illicit movement ofcurrency by terrorist groups, progress on terrorism financing investigationand prosecution and implementation of the United Nations Security Councilresolutions 1267 and 1373, for curbing terror financing.
It was further reported that the number of conditions taken into accountare the concerns of the UNSC resolutions.
This is followed by eight commitments to address the issues regardingterrorism financing prosecution, four are about curbing currency movementacross the border and five recommendations relate to improvement in thesupervision mechanisms of banks and companies.