Pakistani delegation in Beijing to face FATF review starting Tuesday

KARACHI: Pakistani delegation of experts has reached Beijing to participate in the three-day talks with the Asia Pacific Group (APG) of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) starting January 21.
The global money laundering watchdog is holding face-to-face meetings ahead of its plenary session in Paris next month to decide Pakistan’s fate as the South Asian nation makes efforts to avoid blacklisting.
The Pakistani team headed by Minister for Economic Affairs Division, Hammad Azhar, will discuss the progress made on the implementation of 22 action points, out of 27, suggested by the global watchdog while the country claims to have complied with five.
The FATF working group technical team will review Pakistan’s 650-page report filed on January 8, 2020 in response to the 150 questions by the Working Group raised on the country’s initial progress report submitted on December 03, 2019 regarding the implementation of the 27-point action plan.
Pakistan is hopeful to win a ‘largely-compliant’ rating by FATF even if it does not make it out of the grey-list at the moment, which can buy the country more time for full compliance.
“Based on the results we have provided to FATF, we are optimistic. On majority of action items, we are complaint and have made reasonable and significant progress,” Mansoor Hassan Siddiqui, Director General of Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) of Pakistan’s central bank, told Arab News last week.
In October last year, FATF gave Pakistan until February 2020 to make swift progress on the given action plan after observing that the country had only made “limited progress” to curb terrorism financing and money laundering.
Pakistan has amended its laws dealing with anti-money laundering proposing harsh punishment and enhanced financial penalties. Country’s suggested amendments in Foreign Exchange Regulation Act 1947 (FERA) and Anti Money Laundering Act (AMLA) 2010 were passed by the parliament are in process of being promulgated as law.
Pakistan is also taking steps to safeguard saving schemes against ill-gotten money and terror financing through promulgation of National Savings Schemes (AML-CFT) Rules, 2019.
“Pakistan has made substantial progress and is compliant to large extent but we are not fully compliant so far. In the upcoming plenary meeting that will be held in Paris we need three votes to avoid blacklisting that we have,” Muzamil Aslam, senior economists who is closely monitoring the developments, told Arab News. “We are not going to be blacklisted.”
Amid growing opposition from arch rival India, Pakistan has also enhanced its diplomatic efforts ahead of the next month’s meeting to avoid blacklisting especially the recent visit of Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, to United States where he sought US support and hoped that the it would back Pakistan in the upcoming meeting.
“America will be the swing factor. If the US supports Pakistan on the progress we made against terror financing and terrorism, we can immediately move out of the grey-list to white,” Aslam commented.