Islamabad: Pakistan’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar will present the country’s progress at a plenary meeting of the global anti-money laundering watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), in Germany this week.
Hina Rabbani Khar, who is also the Chair of Pakistan’s National FATF Coordination Committee, will lead the Pakistan delegation at the FATF plenary meeting being held in Berlin, Germany from June 14-17.
During the meeting, Pakistan’s progress under the 2018 and 2021 FATF action plans will be discussed. The plenary will review the recommendations of FATF’s International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG). The minister will also hold meetings with the incoming and outgoing FATF officials and heads of delegations of FATF member states to apprise them of the tremendous progress made by Pakistan in completing both FATF action plans.
Pakistan was placed on the FATF grey list in June 2018 and was urged to strengthen anti-money laundering and increase the fight against financing terror. Since then, Pakistan enacted several laws against money laundering and terror financing and initiated several legislative amendments to comply with FATF criteria under the Imran Khan government.
FATF recommendations
Pakistani officials remain confident that the global money-laundering watchdog will remove the country from its grey after complying with all of the FATF recommendations. Hammad Azhar, who had been overseeing the implantation of FATF-related legislation in Pakistan until April 2022, has expressed hopes that the country’s persistent efforts from 2018 to 2022 will be “acknowledged by FATF” and prove to be successful in getting the country off the grey list.
“Pakistan has already been rated as compliant on 32 out of 34 action items. The report regarding the last 2 action items was submitted in April and covers the compliance period from Oct 21 till March 22,” Hammad Azhar said in a tweet. “It’s been a difficult journey but our teams displayed exceptional professionalism. I am optimistic about the completion of both action plans and grant of onsite visit status” he said, lauding the efforts of all ministries and security departments and agencies involved.
The outcome of the FATF meeting will be announced on June 17 June.
FATF has appreciated Pakistan’s “high-level political commitment” since June 2018 to work with the FATF and Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) to address deficiencies in its anti-money laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) regime.
“Pakistan has completed 26 of the 27 action items in its 2018 action plan,” FATF said in its statement and encouraged Pakistan to continue making progress to address the “one remaining item by continuing to demonstrate that terror financing investigations and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terrorist groups.”
