PremiumNEW DELHI: Pakistan has been found to be compliant or “largely" compliant in 31 of 40 parameters listed by the Paris based Financial Action Task Force or FATF which monitors flow of financiers to a news report said over the weekend.
In its mutual evaluation, the FATF’s Asia- Pacific Group (APG) has accepted Pakistan’s stance on almost all contested issues, “underscoring that the country has finally been able to plug many deficiencies in its anti-money laundering and combating terror financing regimes," a report in the Express Tribune said.
The report comes ahead of this month’s FATF assessment meeting on Pakistan and other jurisdictions. Pakistan has been on the FATF watchlist since June 2018 for allowing terrorist groups to source money for their activities. Previous reports of the FATF have found that Pakistan’s compliance has been weak on many counts including UN listed terrorist groups and terrorists being allowed to raise funds for their activities through regular banking channels. The Express Tribune report said that the FATF’s latest report had found that Pakistan had been found compliant or largely compliant on 31 issues significantly reducing the danger of it being blacklisted and joining the ranks of countries like North Korea or Iran. A country being put into the black list means it’s chances of getting funds and investments from abroad are considerably lessened.The compliance in 31 out of 40 parameters helps bringing Pakistan at par with Global AML/CFT standards (Anti Money Laundering/ Combating Financing of Terrorism)," the Express Tribune report said. Pakistan was assessed in two domains: technical compliance/legal instruments (40 FATF recommendations) and demonstration of effectiveness (11 immediate outcomes)," the report said.
Pakistan’s MER was adopted in which the country was rated “compliant" and “largely complaint" in 10 of 40 FATF recommendations for technical compliance.
The technical upgrades achieved will help manifest achievement of effectiveness in 11 immediate outcomes of the APG MER process, the report quoting Pakistan’s finance ministry said.
“As a result of this substantial progress, the APG has decided to move Pakistan from enhanced (expedited) to enhanced follow-up. The country will continue to report back to the APG on progress to strengthen its implementation of AML/CFT measures," the report said.
The APG also said that it welcomed the steps that the country had taken to improve its technical compliance.
“Pakistan has been re-rated on many recommendations, however, insufficient progress has been made to justify a re-rating of R38, and R.37 has been re-rated to NC following the implementation of a new law which imposes restrictive conditions on the provision of mutual legal assistance," the APG report quoted by the Express Tribune said.
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