ISLAMABAD: The Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) has published its report on money-laundering and terror-financing in Pakistan which says that Islamabad has largely but partially complied with 36 of the 40 parameters set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) at the time of the country’s inclusion in the grey list.
The long-awaited 228-page report, titled “Mutual Evaluation Report 2019” was published Saturday, a week before the FATF – the international money-laundering and terror-financing watchdog – is set to announce its decision to remove or retain Pakistan in its grey list, Geo News reported on Monday. The report would provide a basis for the FATF to make its decision in an upcoming Paris meeting scheduled for October 13-18, keeping in view Pakistan’s compliance with the parameters it had set earlier.
However, it pointed out that Islamabad only missed four of the total 40 parameters that it was to follow in order to be effectively removed from the list. The report said Pakistan’s performance on international cooperation was moderate.
It also stressed on the country’s weakness pertaining to risk, policy and coordination; supervision; preventive measures; legal persons and arrangements; financial intelligence; money-laundering (ML) investigations and prosecution; confiscation; terror-financing (TF) investigations and prosecution; TF preventive measures and financial sanctions; proliferation-financing (PF) financial sanctions. Last month, a high-level Pakistani delegation led by Economic Affairs Minister Hammad Azhar had attended a two-day meeting with the APG to discuss Islamabad’s progress on the FATF action plan.
Earlier in August it was reported that out of 40 universal recommendations of FATF, Pakistan’s rating was partially and non-compliant on 30 recommendations and performance was also below par on 10 as against 11 Immediate Outcomes, The News International said.
Out of total 11 Immediate Outcomes, only on one indicator effectiveness was found moderately effective and on rest of 10, the rating was ineffective. The FATF review had placed Pakistan into grey list in June 2018 and had given 27 action plans till September 2019 to comply for coming out from the grey list. This upcoming review of the FATF meeting in Paris will now decide the fate of the country with three possibilities — excluding it from grey and put into green list, continuing it into grey list with extended period of nine to 12 months and thirdly in worst case scenario putting the country into blacklist, having dire consequences for the country’s economy. IANS
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