THE very decision of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to keep Pakistan into the grey list despite the fact that it has implemented twenty six out of twenty seven action plans has once again made it abundantly clear the anti- money laundering watchdog is nothing but a tool in the hands of some countries that are bent to pressurize Pakistan to achieve their geopolitical goals.
Pakistan, indeed, over the last few years has taken concrete steps, both administrative and legislative, to curb money laundering and terrorist financing, and this has also been acknowledged by the FATF.
In fact, the country came a long way to achieve this milestone but now the FATF has handed over another six-point plan of action, making it binding on Islamabad to address the single remaining item on the original plan and the parallel action plan to come out of the grey list. It is really unfair to undertake two different processes against Pakistan simultaneously.
In fact, there is no precedence whatsoever that any other country would have gone through such a tight evaluation.
We have implemented the most difficult action plan never given to anybody else before but still the sword is hanging on our heads.
The very decision of FATF was imminent following Pakistan’s very categorical stance that it will not provide any bases to the United States for any sort of action inside Afghanistan.
Our leadership has taken a very right decision on Afghanistan and it must stick to it, come what may.
In our view, the politicization of the UN counter-terrorism machinery would only compromise the integrity of the system. The FATF must work independently and without any influence.
It must also not overlook the deficiencies that exist in other countries to deal with financial crimes.
One wonders as to why the FATF has not acted so far against India against whom many international reports have surfaced most recently implicating the country of being involved in terror financing and money laundering.
Will the FATF also honestly and transparently evaluate India’s mechanism to deal with financial crimes and will it dare to put it into the grey or blacklist if found faltering?
