Financial Action Task Force announces to formally remove Pakistan from its grey list after four years
PARIS, Oct 21 (SABAH): The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has announced to formally remove Pakistan from its grey list after four years.
This was announced by FATF President T Raja Kumar in Paris on Friday.
He said Pakistan had been on the grey list since 2018 and after a lot of work by the Pakistani authorities, they completed a combined 34 action items to address deficiencies in the anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing systems.
Raja Kumar said FATF welcomes this significant progress as a result Pakistan can now more effectively tackle anti-money laundering and terror financing.
He said an FATF team has verified that the reforms are in place and that there is a high-level of commitment and capacity to sustain those reforms. He said these reforms are good for the stability of the country and the region.
He said: “It has two concurrent action plans. After a lot of work by Pakistani authorities, they have largely addressed all of the action plan items.”
Kumar maintained that the task force had conducted an onsite visit at the end of August. “The onsite team verified that there is a high level of commitment from the Pakistani leadership, sustainability of reforms and commitment to make improvements in the future,” he said.
“As a result of these action plans, Pakistan has made significant improvements to strengthen the effectiveness of this framework for combating terrorism financing.”
In its brief statement, the financial watchdog welcomed Pakistan’s significant progress in improving its anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regime.
“Pakistan has 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 identified in June 2018 and June 2021, the latter of which was completed in advance of the deadlines, encompassing 34 action items in total,” it read.
It should be noted that Pakistan is therefore no longer subject to the FATF’s increased monitoring process.
“Pakistan will continue to work with Asia Pacific Group (APG) to further improve its AML/CFT system,” it further added.
Meanwhile Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar in a statement issued on twitter on Friday said that Pakistan has MA exited FATF Grey List. This has been a long and arduous journey that has only been made possible through strong political ownership across the political spectrum. It shows Pakistan can achieve much when we work together for Pakistan’s interest.
Hina Rabbani Khar said that there are many people who consistently worked through the 4 year to achieve success today. A few of them are here in Paris who were part of the final lap, but many others in a wide array of ministries/orgs/institutions are in Pakistan. I particularly want to congratulate them also, she said.
Meanwhile Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari also announced the good news on his official Twitter handle. “Congratulations to the people of Pakistan. Pakistan has officially been removed from the FATF ‘grey list’,” he said.