Delhi played role to keep Islamabad on FATF grey list: Jaishankar

NEW DELHI: India finally on Sunday admitted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government ensured that Pakistan remains on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), ANI news agency quoted External Affairs Minister (MEA) S Jaishankar as saying.

“Due to us, Pakistan is under the lens of FATF and it was kept in the grey list,” Jaishankar said while addressing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders.

Jaishankar claimed that India was successful in “pressurising” the neighbouring country via the FATF, saying that Pakistan “changed” its behaviour due to the measures taken by the Modi government.

Modi made “personal efforts on global forums like G7 and G20 to keep Pakistan on the list, ANI also quoted the Indian minister as saying.

Last month, the FATF — the global body working to combat the financing of terrorism and money laundering — retained Pakistan on its grey list despite the country meeting 26 of the 27 conditions and handed it over a new six-point action plan, keeping Islamabad exposed to global pressure tactics.

However, the FATF noted that Pakistan had completed all but one of the 27 items in the action plan and it had decided to keep it under “increased monitoring”.

“The FATF encourages Pakistan to continue to make progress to address as soon as possible the one remaining CFT [combating the financing of terrorism]-related item by demonstrating that TF [terror financing] investigations and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terrorist groups,” according to the global body.

The remaining action item was the most significant among all in the view of the member countries including the US and India, which have circled Pakistan through the FATF platform.