Asia Pacific Group retains Pakistan in its 'Enhanced Follow-Up’ list

October 12, 2020 (MLN): Pakistan will remain in Enhanced Follow-Up list for an inadequate progress to strengthen its implementation of AML/CFT measures, the first follow-up Mutual Evaluation Report (MER) of the Asia Pacific Group (APG) says.

Out of 40 FATF recommendations on the effectiveness of anti-money laundering and combating financing terror (AML/CFT) system, Pakistan improved its full compliance in only two, revealed the report.

Overall, Pakistan has made some progress in addressing the technical compliance deficiencies identified in its MER and has been re-rated on one Recommendation.

As per the report, Pakistan requested re-ratings for Recommendations1, 6, and 29 (all rated Partially Compliant in the MER). As a result of this progress, Pakistan has been re-rated on Recommendation 29 from partially compliant to fully compliant.

This improvement is based on amended Income Tax Ordinance 2001 which now allows Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) to have access to tax records and information maintained by Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). Also, the provincial counterterrorism departments (CTD) have been designated as investigation and prosecution agencies under AML Act 2010, which means FMU can now disseminate information to them without a court order.

With regards to Recommendation 1, the report mentioned that the progress on it is not yet sufficient to justify a re-rating at this time. Whereas, the analysis and rating for Recommendation 6 are subject to a major disagreement and consistent with the APG Mutual Evaluation procedures, consideration of this Recommendation has been referred for in-session discussion at the next APG Plenary meeting.

With respect to the other Recommendations which have been amended after the MER was adopted, Pakistan has retained its ratings for Recommendations 2 and 15, the report added.

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