ISLAMABAD: Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar has said that Pakistan has complied with 90 per cent of the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) action plan and the rest will be completed by June this year.
He assured that the last three items on the list will be “fulfilled by Pakistan by June”.
Addressing a news conference here on Friday, he said that Pakistan has so for completed compliance of 24 out of 27 action points of the FATF. He said that Pakistan will come out of the grey list after compliance with the remaining three points.
“The threat of blacklisting Pakistan has been averted,” said the federal minister a day after the FATF granted the country four more months to complete the action plan. “At the previous plenary, FATF countries and the FATF secretariat said that blacklisting was not an option because the country has achieved significant progress,” he added.
“A lot of work has been done on the three points in which we are partially complaint. In my eyes, we are close to being largely compliant in these areas,” said Hammad, who is also the head of the FATF committee.
He said that Pakistan was given the most challenging action plan of the world, but it vigorously pursued to comply with the plan which was also recognised by the international community in FATF plenaries.
He said that Pakistan is determined to act against money laundering and terror financing. Answering a question, Hammad said that India misused the FATF platform to push Pakistan into the blacklist, but due to the government’s concerted efforts of implementing the action plan, this has not been an option for Pakistan now.
He said that Pakistan continued complying with the FATF action plan even during the strong wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We had the option to not report during the coronavirus pandemic [but] Pakistan fulfilled its objectives during the difficult times of coronavirus,” said Hammad, terming the country’s performance as “exemplary”.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Pakistan had the option to not do the reports, an option that was exercised by some countries, according to the minister. “But we took advantage of that time and continued with the reporting. The result of that is in front of you.”
The minister added that Pakistan is perhaps the only country in the world that is under the FATF’s dual scrutiny.
“So, in parallel, our government and departments have also been working day and night on the completion of this process.”
Pakistan will remain on the FATF grey list for another four months, it was revealed on Thursday after the plenary meeting of the FAFT concluded.
According to a handout issued by the Ministry of Finance a day earlier, the FATF had appreciated Pakistan for the significant progress made on the entire action plan.
The plenary meetings of FATF were held virtually from February 22-25, 2021, where its members discussed a range of topics relating to Pakistan’s progress. Pakistan’s delegation in the FATF plenary had been led by FATF Coordination Committee Chairman and Federal Minister for Industries and Production Muhammad Hammad, and attended by senior officers from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Counter Terrorism Authority
(NACTA), Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU), National FATF Secretariat and other key stakeholders.
In its plenary meeting held on February 25, FATF had stated: “To date, Pakistan has made progress across all action plan items and has now largely addressed 24 of the 27 action items.”
The global anti-money laundering watchdog had acknowledged the continued high-level political commitment of Pakistan to combat terrorist financing which, according to the FATF statement, had led to significant progress across comprehensive countering financing of terrorism plan.
Pakistan had undertaken enormous work to strengthen its anti-money laundering (AML) and combatting finance of terrorism (CFT) regime as well as to address the strategic counter-terrorist financing-related deficiencies.
In addition to the acknowledgement by FATF in its plenary statement that Pakistan has made significant progress on the entire action plan by addressing 24 out of the 27 items in the action plan. Pakistan has also made notable progress in the remaining three action items which also stand partially addressed. As of now, all the 10 action items pertaining to the financial sector and border controls have been addressed.
In relation to terrorism financing investigations and prosecutions, six of the eight action items have been addressed, whereas, for targeted financial sanctions, eight of the nine action items also stand addressed. The progress on the remaining three action items is well underway with significant progress made so far.
The Ministry of Finance reaffirmed its commitment to continue strengthening the AML/CFT regime in line with global standards.
In its previous meeting in December, the body said that Islamabad had now reached 21 targets out of 27 set for it in 2018 — when Pakistan was placed on the list of countries with inadequate controls over money laundering — and urged it to complete the plan by February.
Starting February 21, the global anti-money laundering watchdog had engaged in a four-day virtual meeting to discuss, among other matters, the status of Pakistan after a review of the measures it has taken to combat the menace of ill-gotten money.
The meetings were hosted in Paris and multiple countries, including Pakistan, came under review.
