ISLAMABAD: As the three-day virtual meeting of the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF's) plenary begins today, Pakistan is likely to remain on its "grey list" till next year, but "the risk of being placed on its blacklist is over", high-level government sources claimed.
The virtual meeting of the FATF plenary is scheduled for October 21-23, which will decide about the status of Pakistan, based on a review of the country's performance to meet global commitments and standards on fight against money laundering and terror financing (ML&TF).
"Our assessment is, although the risk of going into the FATF blacklist is over, yet the status quo may prevail till next year," a senior government office said, while requesting anonymity.
The next FATF Plenary and Working Group meetings are going to be held in Paris from 21-26 February 2021, and another from 20-25 June, 2021.
"I can say with confidence that we will be out of the FATF's "grey list" by June 2021, if not in February," the official said, adding that if we failed to get out of the "grey list" in the February's plenary, the FATF may go for on-site visit to observe the actions taken by Pakistan.
He pointed out that the International Co-operation Review Group (ICRG) had also acknowledged in its latest report that Pakistan was largely in compliance of 21 points of the 27 points action plan of the FATF.
He further said that up to 80 percent work on the remaining six points was partially completed - those were related to the heads of the organisations/groups sanctioned by the UN Security Council such as Hafiz Saeed of Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and others.
He maintained that India was politicising the FATF's process, which had also been noticed by many FATF members by bringing "individual" cases.
"The issues/points related to anti-money laundering have been addressed and work on the points related to addressing the issues of terror financing is underway. We are hopeful that we will gain enough time after this FATF plenary to address the remaining issues too by the next plenary," the official said further. To a question, he said the government had made a total of 16 legislations related to the FATF's action plan, while there were cases related to "individuals", for which the United States, the United Kingdom and some other countries, involving their own "vested" interests, were pressing for bringing them under the framework. Responding to another query, the official said that Pakistan was not lobbying with the FATF member states for getting votes, adding that the primary objective was compliance for which Pakistan was committed. However, it requires four votes of the member states to break consensus, when the blacklisting phase arrives, he added. The FATF had given Pakistan a four-month grace period in February 2020 this year to complete its 27-point action plan against the ML&TF committed with the international community, when it noted that Pakistan had delivered on 14 points but missed 13 other targets.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020