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Pakistan and FATF,endless list of action plan | By Prof Dr Muhammad Khan

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Pakistan and FATF,endless list of action plan


IT was unfortunate, rather discriminatory that Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has once again decided to keep Pakistan in its Grey List despite, it completed and strictly acted upon all its action plans in last three years.

The worst part of this week-long plenary session of the FATF (ran from June 20-25, 2021) was the statement of FATF President, Marcus Pleyer about Pakistan. Mr Marcus Pleyer said that, Pakistan will remains under “increased monitoring”.

The words “increased monitoring” are not less than charge-sheeting Pakistan, as if it (Pakistan) has committed some serious crime.

Though Mr Pleyer acknowledged the achievements of Pakistan as “substantial progress” for competing the 26 points out of 27, yet he handed over another list of six points for the implementation within a year (by June2022).

Earlier in 21 February 2020 and June 2020, FATF warned Pakistan in the wordings that, “[if] significant and sustainable progress especially in prosecuting and penalising TF (terror financing) not made by the next plenary, the FATF will take action” against Pakistan.

The new list of six points is all about the terror financing, a never ending phenomenon, since terrorism in Pakistan is funded by some of the key states which dictate this organization for their vested interest.

Through its new list of six points, FATF has now demanded Pakistan to address strategically important “AML/CFT deficiencies” (Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism).

The FATF encourages Pakistan to continue to make progress to address as soon as possible the one remaining CFT-related item by demonstrating that TF investigations and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN designated terrorist groups.

It is to be noted that, Pakistan was placed in the grey list of FATF once India initiated a move against Pakistan which was reinforced by United States and Great Britain in June 2018.

It was a well-orchestrated planning against Pakistan for coercing it for not submitting to the demands put-forward by Washington and New Delhi.

These funny justifications of the planners while forcing FATF to place Pakistan in the grey list included that, there were ‘strategic deficiencies’ in its AML and CFT regimes.

The unholy nexus of Washington and New Delhi later included Britain, some EU countries and so-called friends of Pakistan from Muslim states of Middle East to support this biased decision of FATF.

Initially starting from few demands, this exploiting inter-governmental structure (FATF) put forth 27-points for implementation in one year.

The Financial Action Task Force (Grouped’actionfinancière) was established in 1989 as an intergovernmental organization by G-7 states to develop policies for countering the money laundering.

After the incident of 9/11, its scope was expanded to include terror financing with larger political and strategic objectives.

Analysing the 27-points action plan of FATF, one gets the impression that; it was/ is discriminatory in nature and coercive in its objectivity. Despite that, Pakistan made all-out efforts to implement these actions in last three years.

In the implementation phase of 27-points action plan, the Government had to take some decisions which were quite unpopular and annoyed its masses, yet FATF found shortcomings in these clearly implemented actions and it demanded; “do more”.

The do more statement of the FATF clearly indicates that, it is not the 27-points action plan; it is a demand for the total submission of Pakistan for the attainment of strategic objectives of United States and India, especially from the emerging situation in Afghanistan and Pak-China cooperation.

With respect to terror financing, US and EU must know that, Pakistani military and the nation as a whole has given unprecedented sacrifices in the process of defeating the terrorism which has been and is being funding from abovementioned states. No country can match the achievements of Pakistan in the field of combating the terrorism.

Through dozens of military operations and country-wide intelligence operations, Pakistani armed forces defeated the terrorist out-fits and their abettors and financers.

The TTP and many other terrorist outfits in Pakistan were trained, financed and abated by a spying networks of India and Afghanistan (RAW and NDS) with support of occupiers.

All terrorism in Pakistan was sponsored from Afghan soil through these and many other spying networks.

Pakistan physically defeated the terrorism, blocked the financial chain of terrorists and brought peace in the region and still being blamed for the ‘strategic deficiencies’ in its AML and CFT) regimes.

Indeed, the terror financing in Pakistan and other developing countries is being done by spying networks of vested power, some western states, India and other states as mentioned above.

What about the activities of RAW and NDS in Pakistan? The Indian RSS is a terrorist outfit linked with RAW, funded by Government of India including its global financing through money laundering.

The question arises why United States, EU and their Middle Eastern partners are silent over the applicability FATF laws over AML and CFT over RSS and like-minded terrorist organizations.

The disparities and discriminations are indeed aims at coercing Pakistan to submit over the ever increasing demands of US and India on many issues like; provision of military bases to US, submission over Jammu and Kashmir, compromising on Afghanistan, changing the domestic laws and ending the cooperation with China. Pakistan cannot fulfil the endless list of action plan as desired and demanded by FATF.

This discriminatory organization cannot force Pakistan to undergo a continuous and coercive international monitoring (increased monitoring) process.

The political leadership must take decisive steps to come out from this coercive strategy of vested powers.

The diplomatic, financial and legal communities of Pakistan must advise the Government for an honourable way out, rather submitting each time in front of FATF.

— The writer is Professor of Politics and IR at International Islamic University, Islamabad.

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