The Russia Ukraine war has exposed many hypocrisies of the Western countries, with Western nations allowing and even promoting foreign civilians to go fight in the war. Similarly, Ukrainian refugees are given a welcome by Western nations while Arabic, Asian and African refugees are treated very badly by the same nations.
Another hypocrisy of the UK that has been exposed is the fact that UK laws have a loophole where the UK allows the purchase of properties in the UK anonymously via shell companies. This loophole has made the UK very rich while providing a safe place for criminals to deposit their ill-gotten wealth.
UK Government is aware of this fact for decades and nowadays are facing pressure from the EU, who want the UK to confiscate the Russian oligarchy’s properties because Russia invaded Ukraine, where Pakistan and other developing nations have been asking for years to stop this practice, confiscate and return the properties that were bought with a stolen wealth of our nations back to us. The UK has ignored all such requests from developing nations.
This issue also exposes the hypocrisy that is called FATF. While Pakistan is forcefully kept on the grey list of FATF, which is hampering the growth of the people of Worlds fifth most populated nation but FATF has not instigated any strict action against the UK or other nations that allow anonymous shell companies registration and that have been exposed for these practices in the various bank documents leaks over the years.
Both of these issues are hurting Pakistan and should be addressed on all available forums to ensure FATF takes the same tough actions against the UK, Switzerland, etc. Like they did for Pakistan. UK should change their policy and take back the wealth stolen from Pakistan and returns it back to us.
SHAHRYAR KHAN BASEER
PESHAWAR
