PAKISTAN UNLIKELY TO EXIT ‘GREY LIST’ AS FATF MEETS TO DECIDE ITS FATE: REPORT

Pakistan is unlikely to exit the “grey list” of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), as some European countries continue to believe that that Islamabad has failed to take concrete action against terrorists operating from its soil, a media report said on Sunday, on the eve of the plenary meeting of the global watchdog for money laundering and terror financing.

The FATF had placed Pakistan on the grey list in June 2018 and asked Islamabad to implement a plan of action to curb money laundering and terror financing by the end of 2019 but the deadline was extended later on due to Covid-19 pandemic.

The virtual FATF plenary will be held in Paris from 22-25 February to consider cases of various countries on the grey list, including Pakistan, and a decision will be made at the conclusion of the meetings, news agency PTI quoted Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper as saying.

In the last plenary held in October 2020, the FATF concluded that Pakistan will continue in its “grey list” till February 2021 as it has failed to fulfil six out of 27 obligations of the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog that include failure to take action against two of India’s most wanted terrorists—Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar and Jamaat-ud-Dawah head Hafiz Saeed.

Azhar and Saeed are accused of being involved in a number of terrorist activities, including the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks and the 2019 Pulwama attack in Jammu and Kashmir.

An official source close to these developments told the paper on Saturday that Pakistan had complied with the six recommendations and also submitted details to the FATF secretariat.

The paper, quoting a journalist covering the FATF, said that some European countries, especially the host France, had recommended to the FATF to continue to keep Pakistan on the grey list and had taken the position that not all points had been fully implemented by Islamabad. Other European countries are also supporting France, he said.

With agency inputs