February 18, 2019 (MLN): The Financial Action Task Force (FATF)’s plenary meeting is currently taking place in Paris and will continue for another 4 days to deliberate on Pakistan’s progress on anti-money laundering actions recommended by the Force.
The delegation from Pakistan present at this meeting comprises officials from the Ministry of Finance, Foreign Affairs and Financial Monitoring Unit.
The globally recognized body whose purpose is to combat money laundering and terrorism financing will review the development in Pakistan ever since it was placed in the ‘grey list’ in June 2018. After its last meeting, FATF had given Pakistan a 27-point action plan to be implemented till September 2019.
According to media sources, Pakistan has executed all the five actions recommended by the FATF for the period up till now. The Asia Pacific Group (APG) and the Pakistani team had a preliminary session on Sunday to review Pakistan’s updates .A report on these actions has been presented by the (APG) to the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG).
The ICRG will consider the report and provide its recommendations to the task force. The task force will again meet in May to finalize recommendations about Pakistan’s removal from the grey list.
Pakistani authorities are hopeful in this regard and pleased with the progress of the country, having broken through the first milestone. In the last few months, Finance Minister Asad Umar had been following up on Pakistan’s progress every now and then.
The FATF is expected to monitor four key areas –Terrorism Financing Risk Assessment report, report of the customs department on cash couriers, implementation on the United Nations Security Council resolutions, and inter-agency coordination.
Of the five actions to be reviewed in this round of meeting, 3 are related to terrorism financing risk assessment.
According to news reports, the terrorism financing risk assessment report has been prepared following standard methodology by the World Bank and has been pre-approved by the National Executive Committee on Anti Money Laundering (AML).
Nevertheless, Pakistan still has 22 more actions to execute to persuade FATF to take it off the grey list. The Force will conduct two more reviews in May and September 2019, before taking its final decision in this regard.
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