Energy Minister Hammad Azhar said on Saturday that Pakistan’s efforts to meet the technical standards of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) would be acknowledged “soon”.
Energy Minister’s remarks came again in the early hours of Saturday after financial monitoring Maintained Pakistan on its counter-terrorism “Grey List” funding and called on the country to address remaining deficiencies – two unfulfilled goals out of 34 action points – in its financial system as soon as possible.
Pakistan was placed In the 2018 list, which made foreign firms more cautious about investing in the country.
In the concluding session of its hybrid plenary meeting on Friday, the Paris-based global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog lauded Pakistan’s “strong progress” on its global commitments to fight financial crimes.
Azhar tweeted, “Our fight against money laundering and terror financing continues with an unwavering national resolve. We wage war on these activities not only for global compliance, but first and foremost for ourselves.”
He said six of the seven items on the Money Laundering Action Plan were addressed within an “unprecedented time frame”, while 26 of the 27 items on the Terrorist Financing Action Plan were addressed.
“Many countries believe that we have already completed this plan,” he said.
Friday’s Plenary famous That Pakistan had completed 26 of the 27 work items in the FATF’s 2018 action plan and seven work items of the 2021 action plan of the Asia Pacific Group (APG) of the watchdog on money laundering, ahead of the deadline.
It was noted that since June 2018 – when Pakistan has worked with the FATF and APG to counter its anti-money laundering/financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regime and to address its strategic counter Had a high-level political commitment. Terrorist financing-related loopholes – The country’s continued political commitment has led to significant progress in a comprehensive CFT action plan.
The FATF encourages Pakistan to continue making progress in addressing them as soon as possible, to demonstrate that terrorism financing investigations and prosecutions continue to target senior leaders and commanders of terrorist groups designated by the United Nations.
In response to additional deficiencies identified later in Pakistan’s 2019 APG Mutual Evaluation Report in June 2021, Pakistan provided further high-level commitments to address these strategic deficiencies in accordance with a new action plan, which primarily focused on money Focuses on combating laundering.
“Since June 2021, Pakistan has taken rapid steps towards reforming its AML/CFT regime and has completed six of the seven action items before the expiration of any relevant deadline, demonstrating that Including that it is amplifying the effect of sanctions by designating individuals and entities for the United Nations to “prevent and confiscate proceeds of crime consistent with Pakistan’s risk profile,” the FATF said.
“Pakistan should continue to work by demonstrating a positive and sustained tendency to pursue a complex, one remaining item in its 2021 action plan.” [money laundering] investigation and prosecution,” it said.
Officials said Pakistan has now set a target of fully complying with the 2021 action plan to combat anti-money laundering and terror financing by the end of January 2023.
There were two concurrent action plans with a total of 34 action points in the country, 30 of which were addressed either completely or largely to prevent money laundering and terror financing. The most recent Action Plan on Money Laundering from APG for 2021 focused largely on money laundering.
The completion of the APG’s Action Plan for the Effectiveness of AML/CFT is also a structural benchmark of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the end of March.
Recently, the IMF asked Pakistan to complete the last remaining item in the 2018 AML/CFT Action Plan on the effectiveness of terrorist financing investigations and prosecution of senior leaders of UN-designated terrorist groups, and identified in the APG’s mutual assessment. Asked to rectify the shortcomings immediately. Report under the 2021 action plan.