London: The United Kingdom Monday removed Pakistan from the “High Risk Third Countries” list after the South Asian country made a successful exit from the infamous grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) last month.
A notification issued by UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) on Tuesday issued an amendment to the UK’s “high Risk Third Countries” list.
“The amendment removes Pakistan from the list in accordance with the decision taken by the Financial Actional Task Force on 21 October 2022,” it said.
The FCDO also recognized the progress Pakistan has made to “improve money laundering and terrorist financing controls”.
Taking to Twitter, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said: “Some good news. The United Kingdom has officially removed Pakistan from its list of ‘High Risk Third Countries’ following our early completion of FATF action plans.
Some good news. The United Kingdom has officially removed Pakistan from its list of ‘High Risk Third Countries’ following our early completion of FATF action plans. 🇵🇰 🤝 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/clcGHy5771
— BilawalBhuttoZardari (@BBhuttoZardari) November 14, 2022
Pakistan exits FATF’s grey list after 4 years
Last month, the FATF removed Pakistan from its list of “increased monitoring”–also known as the “grey list”–after four years.
The FATF had included Pakistan in its increased monitoring list in June 2018 for deficiencies in Pakistan’s legal, financial, regulatory, investigations, prosecution, judicial and non-government sectors to fight money laundering and terror financing.
What does Pakistan’s exit from FATF grey list imply? | By Sultan M Hali
Since then, Pakistan had made serious attempts to escape the grey list of the watchdog. As a result of Pakistan’s serious efforts, the FATF in June this year announced that Pakistan had completed all 34 items on two separate plans as demanded by the global watchdog for combating money laundering and terror financing.
After the Plenary meeting in October, the watchdog announced that Pakistan was no longer subject to the FATF’s increased monitoring process.
The watchdog noted that Pakistan had strengthened the effectiveness of its AML/CFT regime and addressed technical deficiencies to meet the commitments of its action plans regarding strategic deficiencies that the FATF had identified in June 2018 and June 2021.
