The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has decided to keep Pakistan on the gray list till February 2021.
The decision was announced by FATF President Marcus Player during a virtual press conference following a three-day review of the task force.
During the meeting, the World Watchdog reviewed Pakistan’s implementation of a 27-point action plan to curb terrorist financing and money laundering.
During a virtual press conference, Marx Player said that when Pakistan ensures implementation of all 27 points, then a team will visit Pakistan to review the ground realities.
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He said that the six points that Pakistan has to implement are very important and the government of Pakistan has assured to implement these points.
He added that Iran and North Korea would remain on the blacklist, while Iceland and Mongolia had been removed from the gray list.
A statement issued by the FATF said that Pakistan had successfully implemented 21 of the 27 points of the Action Plan, while 6 had been partially implemented, giving Pakistan until February 2021 to fully implement them.
Expressing satisfaction over Pakistan’s efforts to curb money laundering, the statement said that Pakistan has done a great job in implementing the FATF points.
In a tweet on a social networking site shortly after the announcement by the global watchdog, Industry Minister Hamad Azhar said Pakistan had made “impressive progress” on the FATF’s action plan.
Pak has achieved impressive progress on its FATF action plan.
21 out of 27 action items now stand cleared. Remaining 6 rated as partially complete.
Within a year, we progressed from 5/27 to 21/27 completed items.
FATF acknowledged that any blacklisting is off the table now. 1/2— Hammad Azhar (@Hammad_Azhar) October 23, 2020
He congratulated the federal and provincial teams and said that they worked day and night during the Corona epidemic to ensure this success.
He said that after the progress of Pakistan, the FATF had acknowledged that the issue of blacklisting Pakistan was no longer under consideration.
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It may be recalled that the FATA Planary Group had put Pakistan on the gray list in June 2018 due to ‘strategic shortcomings’ in the process of curbing money laundering and financing of terrorists.
In October 2019, the FATF decided to keep Pakistan on the gray list till February this year and gave a deadline to implement the 27-point action plan.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) had directed Islamabad to take further steps to eradicate money laundering and terrorist financing, while expressing grave concern over the lack of efficiency in addressing the threat of terrorist financing.
The FATF had announced on February 21, 2020 that all the deadlines given to Pakistan for implementation of the 27-point Action Plan have expired and so far only 14 points have been implemented while 13 targets still remain.
The FATF had strongly urged Pakistan to implement all action plans expeditiously by June 2020 or else it would be blacklisted.
However, due to the Corona virus epidemic, meetings at all levels of the FATF were postponed, giving Pakistan an extra four months to implement the points.