PARIS: The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on Thursday decided to keep Pakistan on its ‘grey list’, with the country’s status set to be reviewed next at an extraordinary plenary session in June 2021.
The announcement was made by FATF President Dr Marcus Pleyer at a press briefing from Paris on the outcomes of the FATF’s four-day virtual plenary meeting.
“Pakistan remains under increased monitoring,” Pleyer said, adding that while Islamabad had made “significant progress”, there remained some “serious deficiencies” in mechanisms to plug terrorism financing.
“Three out of 27 [points] need to be fully addressed,” he said, referring to the action plan agreed to by Pakistan.
While reiterating that Pakistan has made “progress”, the FATF president said: “[We] strongly urge completion of the plan [by Pakistan].”
He said Pakistan “must improve their investigations and prosecutions of all groups and entities financing terrorists and their associates and show [that] penalties by courts are effective. As soon as Pakistan shows it has completed these items, FATF will verify and members of FATF will vote.”
Responding to a question by an Indian journalist about prosecution of terrorists in Pakistan, Pleyer clarified that the FATF was not an investigative organisation. “What we assess is the entire system of anti-money laundering [and] the framework. This does not change with incidents per se,” he said.
“What is now essential is that Pakistan completes the action plan.”
The FATF president noted that Pakistan was working towards its commitment made at a high level to implement the illicit financing watchdog’s recommendations, saying “that is not the time to put a country on the blacklist”.
He added that as soon as Pakistan completed the action, the watchdog “will verify the sustainability of the reforms and discuss in next plenary in June”.
Answering another question about alleged funding of terrorism by India, the FATF president declined to comment on specific incidents, reiterating that the watchdog was not an investigative agency. “India is subject to [the] same rules as any other country and FATF will assess India as any other country when the time comes,” he added.
Meanwhile, a note on the FATF website said Pakistan “should continue to work on implementing the three remaining items in its action plan to address its strategically important deficiencies”, namely by:
1) demonstrating that TF (terrorism financing) investigations and prosecutions target persons and entities acting on behalf or at the direction of the designated persons or entities;
2) demonstrating that TF prosecutions result in effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions; and
3) demonstrating effective implementation of targeted financial sanctions against all 1267 and 1373 designated terrorists, specifically those acting for or on their behalf.
“The FATF takes note of the significant progress made on the entire action plan. To date, Pakistan has made progress across all action plan items and has now largely addressed 24 of the 27 action items,” the statement read. “As all action plan deadlines have expired, the FATF strongly urges Pakistan to swiftly complete its full action plan before June 2021.”
Reacting to the FATF decision, the government’s point man on FATF, federal minister Hammad Azhar, said Pakistan had completed “almost 90 per cent” of its current FATF action plan with 24 out of 27 items rated as ‘largely addressed’ and the remaining three items ‘partially addressed’.
“FATF has acknowledged Pakistan’s high-level political commitment since 2018 that led to significant progress. It was also noted by FATF member countries that Pakistan is subject to perhaps the most challenging & comprehensive action plan ever given to any country,” he tweeted, saying the country was also subject to dual evaluation processes of FATF with differing timelines.
Azhar said Pakistan remained committed to complying with both the FATF evaluation processes. “I would like to commend the hard work done by dedicated teams in multiple government departments at Federal & provincial tiers,” he added.
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