Terror financing from abroad: FATF ignores Pak request for help

ISLAMABAD: The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Friday turned a deaf ear to Pakistan’s request seeking help from more than one dozen countries to control terrorist organisations’ financing from different countries.

In a highly confidential report, the Pakistani authorities informed the FATF this week that some eight terror groups were funding terrorists in Pakistan which were operating from fifteen countries, including the United States, China, United Kingdom and some European nations.

"The FATF has not listened to us [Pakistan]. We want the FATF’s cooperation on this serious issue but the watchdog turned a deaf ear to our pleading in Paris meeting this week,” a senior Pakistani official told this correspondent seeking anonymity.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoF) initiated some 75 requests to 15 countries, majority of them are the permanent members of the FATF, revealed the official who attended the FATF’s al recent meetings.

“We have shared incriminating evidences with 15 countries that 18 terrorist organisations are generating huge funds to finance non-state actors in Pakistan,” he added. Despite producing four different reports, with imperial evidences, the FATF asked Pakistan to show significant and sustainable progress with full range of its action plan by the next plenary otherwise the watchdog will take action.

“Which [action] could include the FATF calling on its members and urging all jurisdictions to advise their FIs to give special attention to business relations and transactions with Pakistan,” FATF stated in its official statement released on Friday.

Islamabad sought FATF’s cooperation on the terror groups namely TTP, LeJ, JuA, Harakat-ul-Ansar (HuA), Daesh, Al-Qaeda (AQ), Emarat-e-Islamia, Tehreek-e-Taliban Swat (TTS), Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), Baloch Republican Army (BRA), Hamas-Linked NPO, International Islamic Charitable Organization (IICO), Revival of Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS), Zakat House Kuwait and Local NPOs/Eid Bin Muhammad Charity.

These groups are funding families of dead members/operators and raising funds for activation of training centres in Afghanistan and other countries. These organisations are sending funds from Hamas linked NPO, Zakat House, to madrassas and siphoning out huge amounts from accounts by cash and bank transactions in Pakistani and UK banks and subsequently using such amounts in terrorist financing and terrorist activities, showed the document exclusively made available with Geo Television Network.

Some organizations and their operators who are facing charges of funding terrorism, collecting information, glorification and dissemination of terrorist publications were sending money by a convicted terrorist from the UK through the bank channel in Pakistan.

Pakistan in its report told FATF that two requests, under the mutual legal assistance (MLA) law, to the United States of America where authorities have shared undeniable evidences that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA)—Omar Khalid Khorasani group, were generating funds for their operations. Islamabad has generated two requests to China, four MLA requests to UK, one to Germany, two each to Switzerland, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, 42 to Afghanistan, four to Kuwait, one each to Oman, Iran, Egypt and Bahrain and three MLA requests were sent to Qatar, revealed the confidential document.

Nearly eight of eighteen terrorists organisations, generating funds from aforesaid countries, have no basic roots in Pakistan, showed the confidential document which continued to reveal that Islamabad has yet to hear from aforesaid countries, except Afghanistan, which responded to 1 (one) of 42 requests in past ten months.

Pakistan further told the FATF that it signed MoUs with China, the UAE and Malawi and some other MoUs were under negotition with Australia, Japan, and Lebanon.

The FMU’s Egmont Group membership is also in process. Pakistan has also approached the Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) of Iran, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Qatar and the UK to gather details for any financial intelligence on money laundering, associated predicate offences and terrorism financing. In around more than 2.3 million combing operations conducted under the National Action Plan, Pakistan convicted 62 persons and filed over 750 cases against operators of AQ, JUA, SSP, JeM, LeJ, ASWJ, FIF, JuD and Daesh in past eighteen months under terror financing charges by putting top leadership of FIF, JuD and JeM in jails.

Implementing FATF’s recommendations, authorities have confiscated all 150 properties of JuD and where 36 terrorist financing cases were registered against trustees as well. Operations revealed details of properties and cases link to JuD/FIF (properties 15, 6 cases), Al-Anfaal Trust, Lahore (properties 72, 15 cases), Al Dawat-ul-Irshad, Pakistan (10 properties, 5 cases, Al-Hamad Trust, Lahore/Faisalabad (04 properties, 2 cases), Mosques & Welfare Trust (4 properties/cases, Al Madina Foundation, Lahore (2/2 properties/cases, Maaz Bin Jabal Educational Trust, (2 property/case) and Idara-i-Khidmat-i-Khalq (42/01 cases/properties). Pakistani authorities recovered some Rs1.2 billion linked to operators of Daesh, TTP, AQ, JuD, JeM, LeT, TTA, TTP, etc and filed cases against them.

The Facebook profiles and pages being used by operators of these organizations from above mentioned countries for enhancing/promoting/propagating/glorifying the agenda/intercommunication and terrorist financing of terrorist organizations. Confidential documents further revealed that IICO, a Kuwait based NPO working in Pakistan, receiving foreign funding from international NPOs based in Egypt, Qatar, KSA, Kuwait and Bahrain allegedly used for terror financing, authorities told .