After a period of 4 years, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which is a global money laundering and terrorism financing watchdog, on Friday has removed Pakistan from a list of nations under “increased monitoring”, also known as the “grey list.”
During an address at the conclusion of its plenary, the President of FATF, Raja Kumar has mentioned that Pakistan had been on the grey list since 2018.
He said that, “It has two(2) concurrent action plans. After a lot of work by authorities of Pakistan, they have largely addressed all of the actions plans items.”
Nicaragua too exited the list along with Pakistan, which had been under a close FATF monitoring since 2018. Tanzania, Congo and Mozambique were added to the list.
An onsite visit by a FATF team in August had found that Pakistan was broadly in compliance with all 34 action points it had been asked to improve upon.
The Chief of FATF, Raja Kumar of Singapore, said that, “Pakistan can now more effectively tackle money laundering and terror financing.”
The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani had reached Paris earlier this week with a team representing the nation. Off the grey list, Pakistan will now be able to get more foreign direct investment, which had shown a downward trend recently.
Raja Kumar further stated that the task force had conducted an onsite visit at the August end. The onsite team has made a verification that there is a high level of commitment from the leadership of Pakistan, sustainability of reforms & commitment to make improvements in the future, he added.
“Resulting which, these action plans, Pakistan had made major improvements to empower the effectiveness of this framework for battling terrorism financing.”
Raja Kumar said steps had also been initiated to empower risk-based supervision of financial & non-financial institutions, improve asset confiscation of outcomes, and probe and prosecute money laundering.
He mentioned that, “Resulting which, Pakistan had been removed from the increased monitoring list.”