FATF team finalises report on Pakistan

After an on-site assessment of the steps taken by Pakistan to curb financing and money laundering, a visiting Financial Action Task Force (FATF) team has finalised a report with 40 recommendations for de-listing Islamabad from its grey list from September next year, according to a media report Friday.

Currently placed on the FATF’s ‘grey list’, Pakistan has been scrambling in recent months to avoid being added to a list of countries deemed non-compliant with anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regulations by the Paris-based FATF, a measure that officials here fear could further hurt its economy.

   

A nine-member team of the FATF’s Asia-Pacific Group (APG) arrived here on October 8 to review the measures as promised by Pakistan in June to tackle the concerns about money laundering and terror financing. Dawn reported that the AGP suggested measures in its report on Thursday after the on-site assessment of prevailing legal and institutional framework during its 11 days of engagement with stakeholders, to curb terror financing and money laundering in Pakistan.

A source privy to meetings told Dawn that the report which is termed “Exit Report” will be submitted formally to the government on Friday, the last day of the stay of the global experts in Pakistan.

The report, according to the source, will be discussed at a meeting to be attended by senior officers of all leading government departments and agencies, especially the Federal Investi­gation Age­ncy, the Financial Monitoring Unit, the Federal Board of Revenue and the Anti-Narcotics Force to respond to queries raised in the exit report. The report includes 40 recommendations which were segregated in 11 outcomes performance benchmarks.

According to the source, Pakistan is compliant in more than 50 per cent of the recommendations. How­ever, it said it was not clear whether it would be sufficient for Pakistan to come out of the grey list. Pakistan was placed on the grey list by the FATF in June for failing to curb anti-terror financing.

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