Pakistan to continue in FATF Grey List despite lobbying

Pakistan will continue to remain on the grey list of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) according to global financial anti-terror watchdog whose plenary is underway at Paris from Sunday.
Pak allies Turkey and Malaysia supported Pakistan at ongoing meet but that was not enough for Islamabad to move out Grey List. ET had reported last week that Pakistan will continue to be in Grey List of FATF. Final decision on Pakistan’s presence in FATF Grey List will come on Friday.
Islamabad was being evaluated by the International Co-operation Review Group (ICRG), a part of FATF, for the steps taken by the former on the implementation of its plan of action to curb terror funding.

As many as 12 out of 39 votes in FATF are required to move out of Grey List and it is highly unlikely for Pakistan to manage that support in foreseeable future and Islamabad may find it difficult to get reprieve from the Grey List over the next two-three years, Western diplomatic sources told ET.

Pakistan was placed on the grey list by the Paris-based watchdog in June 2018 and was given a plan of action to complete it by October 2019, or face the risk of being blacklisted. In the FATF review meeting, that was held in Beijing between 21-23 January, Pakistan had submitted a 125-page report that does not include 500 pages of annexures to show the steps that it had taken in the last six months to control terror financing.

When the FATF had released the Mutual Evaluation Report of Pakistan in October last year, it had emerged that Pakistan had failed to take enough action to stop terror financing in the country which headquarters groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Haqqani network and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Pakistan at that time was awarded the classification of “significant deficiencies” on both the parameters of “effectiveness ratings” and “technical compliance ratings”. Of the 11 parameters that constitute the “Effectiveness ratings”, that shows how the country has performed while dealing with money laundering and combating the financing of terror, Pakistan had got “low” rating in 10 of the 11 parameters, while it got “moderate” for “international cooperation”.

Ahead of the FATF meeting, Pakistan has claimed that it has arrested 38 district commanders of various terror outfits but none of them have been designated by the UN.