The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will make public the outcome of its three-day plenary meeting today to decide whether Pakistan will remain on its gray list or not.
Pakistan has been on the FATF’s Enhanced Watch List, also known as the Gray List, since June 2018, for deficiencies in its counter-terrorism financing and anti-money laundering regimes.
The virtual meeting of the FATF Plenary today will be chaired by Dr. Marcus Player, while there will also be representatives representing 205 members of the global network and observer organizations including the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units. participate in the meeting.
According to the FATF website, “The FATF will finalize key reports, including revised guidance on virtual assets and their service providers, and discuss next steps to strengthen its standards on transparency of beneficial ownership.
“The representatives will also discuss the results of the FATF survey to identify areas where there is friction for cross-border payments due to different anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing rules or their implementation. Improvements to the FATF cross-border The G20 is working on this aspect of priority for the -limit payments.
“The FATF will also update its statements identifying jurisdictions with strategic deficiencies in measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing,” the website said.
The FATF held its last session in June. kept Pakistan is on the “Enhanced Watch List” of surveillance until it addresses the single remaining item on the Basic Action Plan agreed in June 2018 as well as the Parallel Action Plan given by the Asia Pacific Group – FATF’s regional partner but addresses all items.
“Pakistan has made significant progress and has addressed 26 of the 27 items on the Plan of Action that were first taken in June 2018,” FATF President Dr Marcus Pleier said after a plenary meeting.
However, he said that the remaining item on financial terrorism still needed to be addressed which pertains to the “investigation and prosecution of senior leaders and commanders of terrorist groups designated by the United Nations”.
The FATF, after discussions, had decided to maintain the status quo for Pakistan – the countries which are under surveillance. It is expected that the remaining action items will be completed before the next plenary meeting of the FATF, scheduled for October.
Soon after the announcement, the then Minister of Industries and Production Hammad Azhar had said that the APG had given seven additional action points under the parallel mutual evaluation mechanism, under which Islamabad had largely completed 75 of the 82 action points.
Azhar had said that Pakistan would achieve within three-four months the only remaining target of the FATF to speedily prosecute the leaders of UN-designated terror groups.
He had said that the government has set a target of completing seven action points of the APG within 12 months – a target that most courts achieve in two years.
The Pleader made it clear that Pakistan would not be removed from the gray list until both action plans were completed and the members then concluded that the systems and efforts were sustainable against financial risks.
He had said that the rules apply very clearly and uniformly that the jurisdictions under the enhanced watch list must meet all action points and fully address the risks.
Under the new action plan, Pakistan will have to address its strategically important AML/CFT deficiencies. These include increasing international cooperation by amending MLA law to indicate that assistance is being sought from overseas in implementing the UNSCR 1373 designations, and also on-site and off-site, commensurate with the specific risks associated with non-financial designated observers. -Site supervision is conducting both. Business and business (DNFBP) including the imposition of appropriate sanctions where necessary.
The new actions also require Pakistan to demonstrate that proportionate and counterproductive sanctions to legal systems for non-compliance with all legal persons and beneficial ownership requirements consistently apply, showing an increase in ML investigations and prosecutions and crimes. The proceeds are controlled and confiscated in line with Pakistan’s risk profile, including working with foreign counterparts to locate, freeze and confiscate assets. Also, the government must demonstrate that the DNFBP is being monitored for compliance with expansion financing requirements and sanctions are being imposed for non-compliance.
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