No relief yet for Pakistan as FATF keeps it on global grey list

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on Friday announced it would keep Pakistan on the grey list until at least February next year.

Speaking at a virtual press conference in Paris on Friday the anti-money laundering/terror financing watchdog’s president Marcus Pleyer said there were still conditions Pakistan needs to comply with before they can be removed from the grey list.

“Pakistan must comply with the remaining six items, then the FATF will send its onsite team to verify progress on the ground. After completion of this process, the FATF will consider Pakistan to be excluded from the list of jurisdictions with increased risk of terror financing that is called the grey list.”

Pleyer said although Pakistan has made progress in terms of carrying out reforms and implemented measures such as imposing sanctions against those financing terrorism, more still needed to be done.

The FATF plenary removed Iceland and Magnolia from the grey list. North Korea and Iran will remain on the blacklist.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Industries Hammad Azhar said on Twitter: “FATF acknowledges that any blacklisting is off the table now. Pak has achieved impressive progress on its FATF action plan. 21 out of 27 action items now stand cleared. Remaining 6 rated as partially complete. Within a year, we progressed from 5/27 to 21/27 completed items.”

According to a statement issued by FATF Pakistan’s continued political commitment has led to progress in a number of areas including taking action to identify and sanction illegal MVTS, implementing cross-border currency and controls, improving international cooperation in terrorist financing cases and applying sanctions where necessary, among others.

The statement noted that Pakistan should continue to work on implementing its action plan to address its strategic deficiencies.

One area FATF said Pakistan needs to work on is to demonstrate effective implementation of targeted financial sanctions against all 1,267 and 1,373 designated terrorists and those acting for or on their behalf.

However, the FATF said it “takes note of the significant progress made on a number of action plan items. To date, Pakistan has made progress across all action plan items and has now largely addressed 21 of the 27 action items. As all action plan deadlines have expired, the FATF strongly urges Pakistan to swiftly complete its full action plan by February 2021.”