The global dirty money watchdog decides to keep Pakistan on its watch list despite Islamabad’s progress in complying with international terrorist financing standards.
Pakistan will remain on a terrorist financing watch list until it fully implements a set of preventive guidelines, a global watchdog said, urging Islamabad to improve financial controls.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental body, praised Pakistan for progress on 21 of the 27 recommendations, but said the rest should be implemented as well.
Last February, Pakistan secured an additional four months to complete the plan after missing 13 of the 27 targets the FATF had set for it in 2018 when it put Pakistan on its “gray list.” Then the grace period was extended again due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The so-called “gray list” includes countries whose controls on the financing of “terrorism” are considered inadequate.
“The government of Pakistan has stated its commitment to complete the rest of its action plan. But it is clear that even though Pakistan has moved forward, it needs to do more, ”said FATF President Dr. Marcus Pleyer, concluding a virtual meeting in Paris on Friday to discuss global financial systems, including terrorist financing.
“Pakistan cannot stop now. It needs to continue to carry out reforms, in particular to implement specific financial sanctions and to prosecute and sanction those who finance terrorism ”.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said before the decision that his regional rival India was pushing to demote the country to a more punitive “blacklist”.
The Asia Pacific Group, a regional affiliate of the watchdog, recommended keeping Pakistan on the gray list because there were still risks of terrorist financing going unnoticed.
Pakistan’s powerful military is often accused of harboring fighters to use as proxies against India and neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistan had been on the FATF blacklist for years before it was removed in 2015 following “significant progress” in fighting terrorist financing. Only Iran and North Korea are currently blacklisted.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, elected in 2018, has been fighting to end threats from armed groups as he comes under pressure from painful austerity measures taken to rectify an unstable economy and meet the terms of his latest bailout of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Separately on Friday, Iceland and Mongolia were removed from the FATF list of countries under increased monitoring.
The Paris-based organization also said fraud related to the coronavirus pandemic was on the rise, with counterfeit medical supplies, economic stimulus measures and online scams hitting governments around the world hard.
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