FATF team on 12-day onsite inspection, Islamabad says ‘we are prepared’

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Ministry of Finance claimed on Monday that it is well-prepared to brief the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) team about measures taken to curb terror financing through money laundering and illegal remittances.
“We are well-prepared for it at every level,” Mehrin Liaqat, spokesperson for the Ministry of Finance, told Arab News.
She said that every government department, including the Ministry of Finance and the State Bank of Pakistan, have done their best to plug loopholes in the system through amendments in certain rules and regulations.
“We are hopeful we can satisfy the visiting FATF team (about actions taken to block terror financing),” she said.
Liaqat said the nine-member team of the Asia Pacific Group — an arm of the Paris-based FATF — arrived here on Sunday to begin a 12-day “on-site inspection” of the country.
“Today, the FATF team is holding negotiations at the secretary level,” she said. “Later, they will meet the finance minister and other officials as well.”
Pakistan was placed on the FATF “gray list” in June this year during a plenary session of the global watchdog in Paris after a review of the monitoring report of the International Cooperation Review Group.
The FATF is an intergovernmental body based in Paris which battles money laundering, terrorist financing and other threats to the international financial system. It was set up in 1989.
Pakistan and the FATF negotiated a 10-point action plan to be implemented by September 2019 to get off the gray list.
In August, a FATF team visited Islamabad to identify deficiencies in Pakistan’s anti-money laundering and counter-terror financing laws and mechanisms.
The government last week announced that it had finalized amendments to relevant laws — Federal Investigation Agency Act 1974, Foreign Exchange Regulation Act 1947, Customs Act 1969, and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2010 — that would be presented to the prime minister and his cabinet for approval.
Ministry of Finance officials will inform the FATF team about the proposed amendments in the laws to plug the loopholes, and then table them in parliament for passage, Ministry of Finance officials told Arab News.
The visiting team will also be briefed about the amendments introduced recently to block terror financing in rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan and the State Bank of Pakistan.
Dr. Kaiser Bengali, a renowned economist, said that it is in Pakistan’s interest to plug loopholes in the legal system to block terror financing through money laundering and illegal remittances.
“We should not wait for anybody to ask us to fix the loopholes in our economic system,” he told Arab News.