PARIS – The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) stated on Friday that Pakistan will remain on the grey list, despite “substantial progress” in completing the needed action items to be removed off the list.
Pakistan has fulfilled 26 of the 27 action items in its 2018 action plan, according to the FATF.
“Since June 2018, when Pakistan made a high-level political commitment to work with the FATF and the APG to strengthen its anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) regimes and address strategic counter-terrorist financing-related deficiencies, Pakistan’s continued political commitment has resulted in significant progress across a comprehensive counter-terrorist financing action plan,” the statement read.
It goes on to say that the FATF encourages Pakistan to keep making progress toward resolving the last issue as quickly as feasible by demonstrating that TF investigations and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terrorist organisations.
In June 2021, Pakistan provided a new high-level commitment to address these “strategic deficiencies pursuant to a new action plan that primarily focuses on combating money laundering,” according to the international watchdog, in response to additional deficiencies later identified in Pakistan’s 2019 APG Mutual Evaluation Report (MER).
Pakistan has taken rapid steps to improve its AML/CFT regime since June 2021, completing six of the seven action items ahead of any relevant deadlines, including demonstrating that it is enhancing the impact of sanctions by nominating individuals and entities for UN designation and restraining and confiscating proceeds of crime in line with Pakistan’s risk profile.
“Pakistan should demonstrate a good and consistent trend of pursuing complicated ML investigations and prosecutions to address the one remaining item in its 2021 action plan,” the statement added.
