The 37-nation FATF at its plenary meeting in Paris last week placed Pakistan on a watch list of the countries where terrorist outfits are still allowed to raise funds.
Pakistan vowed to take further actions to address certain “deficiencies” highlighted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in its anti-money laundering and counter-terror financing framework.
The 37-nation FATF at its plenary meeting in Paris last week placed Pakistan on a watch list of the countries where terrorist outfits are still allowed to raise funds.
Though Pakistan has not been named, it has to submit the action plan to implement UN Security Council resolutions on anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism by April, failing which it would figure in the list.
Foreign Office spokesman Dr Mohammad Faisal, during his weekly briefing, also confirmed that “Pakistan will be assigned to the ‘grey list’ in June, once an action plan has been mutually negotiated”.
“It (the FATF) has highlighted certain “deficiencies” in the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering of Terrorist Financing (AML/CFT) framework of Pakistan… We will take further actions for addressing any remaining deficiencies,” he said.
Faisal said that Pakistan, over the last few years, took a number of measures to address these issues, including through enactment of legislation, issuance of regulations and guidelines to the financial sector, establishment of the Financial Monitoring Unit and implementation of UNSC 1267 sanctions on the entities of concern like Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-i-Insaaniyat (FIF).
The US officials had said that JuD leader and Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed and his “charities” were top on the list of the groups that the FATF wanted Pakistan to act against.
The statement that Pakistan will be transferred from the ‘grey’ to the ‘black’ list in June this year was not true as the FATF website clearly demarcates the countries in the ‘black’ list as those who are non-cooperative, Faisal said.
Pakistan was in touch with the US, and Lisa Curtis, Senior Director for South and Central Asia at US National Security Council visited Pakistan on February 26 and met Foreign Secretary (Tehmina Janjua), he said.
“We continue to get differing signals from different parts of the US Government… Pakistan has made immense efforts to address issues related to counter-terrorism. We continue to ask the US for actionable evidence,” Faisal said.
The UK government confirmed that it would continue to allow trade concessions to Pakistan after Brexit, as is being done by the European Union, he said, adding that the annual trade between Pakistan and the UK stands at about USD 2.5 billion.
