ISLAMABAD: Detailed reply was dispatched to Joint Group of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to share the progress on remaining 22 points.
Pakistan on Wednesday night dispatched the 620 page including annexure details of 500 pages to Joint Group of FATF for sharing progress on 22 points in a bid to come out of the grey list.
The detailed response and progress report was dispatched to FATF Wednesday night, reports said.
The joint group of FATF will scrutinize Pakistan’s compliance and progress report mentioned in detailed report dispatched in its scheduled meeting at Beijing (China) from January 21 to 24, 2020 where the Pakistani delegation will be given the opportunity to defend each and every point written in its progress report.
The plenary meeting of FATF for deciding the fate of the county is expected to take place in Paris by mid February 2020 in which Pakistan’s progress report on 22 point action plan will be gauged with possibility of three scenarios, including graduating from grey list to white list, keeping the country on grey list for another extended period of three to six months and thirdly putting the country on undesirable blacklist.
Earlier, the FATF in the last plenary meeting had shown satisfaction over 5-point action plan out of total 27 and kept the country on the grey list for extended period up to February 2020.
Pakistan is expecting that the FATF may grant another relaxation probably up to June or September 2020 in its upcoming plenary review meeting, as the February deadline is too short a period for Pakistan to comply with all remaining 22 action plans.
The FATF kept the country on its grey list for an extended period up to February 2020 and warned that it would be put on the blacklist if it did not comply with the remaining 22 out of 27 points related to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing.
Pakistan has so far successfully managed to avoid the blacklist due to diplomatic support from China, Turkey, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Middle East countries. India had failed to convince the world powers that Pakistan was not cooperating with the watchdog related to terror financing. Now Pakistan required three votes out of total 39 members of FATF forum to avoid falling into blacklist.
The joint working group of the FATF declared Pakistan as largely compliant on 10 points, but the FATF plenary meeting accepted Islamabad’s compliance only on five points out of 27 action plans.
The FATF said all deadlines in the action plan had now expired. Noting recent improvements, the FATF again expressed serious concern over the overall lack of progress by Pakistan to address its terrorist financing (TF) risks, including remaining deficiencies in demonstrating a sufficient understanding of its transnational TF risks, and more broadly, the country’s failure to complete its action plan in line with the agreed timelines and in light of the TF risks emanating from the jurisdiction.
Pakistan has only largely addressed five of 27 action items, with varying levels of progress made on the rest of the action plan. The FATF strongly urged the country to swiftly complete its full action plan by February 2020.
Read more: Pakistan to come out of FATF grey list in 2020: Hammad Azhar
