FATF to review Pakistan’s progress report on 18th

ISLAMABAD: The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Plenary and Joint Working Group is scheduled to meet in Paris from February 18 to 22 in which Pakistan’s progress report on measures against money laundering and terror financing will be scrutinised in detail.

Pakistan’s progress report will be scrutinised at a time when the European Commission had included 23 countries including Pakistan into the list having deficiencies in anti- money laundering and terror financing frameworks. However, Pakistani authorities argued that the last Sydney meeting of FATF/Asia Pacific Group (APG) proved fruitful for Pakistan despite Indian efforts to spoil Islamabad’s efforts, but the country’s performance was applauded by all other countries and stakeholders.

“The Joint Working Group (JWG) will present its report to the FATF on Pakistan’s steps taken till January 2019. It will also share its findings whether Islamabad is progressing satisfactorily for envisaged targets of coming May and September 2019 after which the final result on existing grey category will be determined,” said top official sources while talking to The News here Thursday.

It is not yet decided who will lead Pakistani delegation. Secretary Finance Arif Ahmed Khan or Director General Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) Mansoor Hussain may lead the delegation because the ministry of high-ups are engaged on many other important economic issues these days.

Pakistani authorities stated that the JWG showed its satisfactions over the steps taken by Islamabad till January 2019 so they were confident that the country would not face any problem at this meeting.

“We will make diplomatic efforts to get favourable response during the plenary meeting at Paris,” said one official when this scribe sought his comments on Thursday.

When asked about the reasons for inclusion into list of EU having deficiencies in framework related to anti-money laundering and curbing terror financing framework, they said that as per rules the EU list automatically updated its list when Pakistan put on the grey list and Pakistan was on this list since 2018. Now they had added Kingdom of Saudi Arabia into the list and few others. “We were already into the EU list,” they added.

However, other relevant sources said that the critical targets would be analysed on the basis of progress made in coming May and September 2019 and all institutions at federal and provincial levels would have to act together to implement all desired targets in order to come out from grey list instead of slipping into high undesirable black list having far reaching negative impact for Pakistan and its struggling economy.