Mohammad Arshad Islamabad
Pakistan is very likely to be placed out of grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) because Pakistan has made significant progress on 26 out of 27 recommendations of the FATF.
To further evaluate Pakistan’s performance on the implementation of the recommendations moved by the FATF, the preliminary meeting would be held on July 21- 25.
Sources privy to the development have revealed to Pakistan Observer that in the wake of such a significant progress shown by Pakistan, any decision to keep Pakistan on grey list would be of a political natured or politically motivated.
Sources further revealed before the preliminary meeting of the FATF, Pakistan’s performance would also be gauged in a virtual meeting of international cooperative review group in recent days. This group includes China, France, India, US and UK.
This group will compile a report on Pakistan’s progress on the FATF recommendations and will be presented before the preliminary meeting next month.
Sources said that in the beginning of current month, FATF released its report and declared Pakistan’s progress as satisfactory on the recommendations.
Report said that Pakistan implemented 31 out of 40 points moved by the FATF. Finance Division has termed the progress on these points as seriousness of Pakistan towards the FATF. P
akistan has expressed strong resolve against anti-money laundering (AML) and terror financing equivalent to the international standards and it implemented 21 points in a very short span of time. In 2019, Pakistan implemented 10 points moved by FATF regarding checking AML and terror financing.
FATF report has further revealed that Pakistan promulgated amendments in 14 laws at federal level and three laws at provincial level which brought about stability in the financial system as well as strengthened financial monitoring system in Pakistan; in and out flow of transactions as well as placing checks on the suspicious transactions.
In this regard, Pakistan submitted report on its technical progress on FATF recommendations to FATF APG in October last year.
