ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's foreign office spokesperson has said Pakistan has complied with all requirements of global dirty money watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), to be removed from a “grey list,” but “politicisation” by some countries at the forum remains a problem.
Pakistan was placed on FATF’s grey list of countries in 2018 for inadequate terror funding and money laundering controls.
In June last year, FATF President Marcus Pleyer said Islamabad had made “significant progress” but there remained “serious deficiencies” in mechanisms to plug money laundering and terrorism financing. The country was also handed another seven-point action plan to be implemented along with the original 27 points to exit the grey list.
Pakistan says archrival India is lobbying against it at the global financial watchdog.
“In the context of FATF, we have faithfully complied with and completed all technical requirements and hope that the outcome would be in the positive direction,” foreign office spokesperson Asim Iftikhar Ahmad told reporters on Thursday. “But I think it is known that there are issues of politicization by some countries, and that remains a problem. Having said that, I think Pakistan is a strong and important country, we know how to defend our interests.”
Last July, India's Minister for External Affairs S Jaishankar was quoted as saying the Indian government had ensured that Pakistan remained on the FATF's grey list of countries with inadequate money laundering and terror funding controls.
“Due to us, Pakistan is under the lens of FATF and it was kept in the grey list," Jaishankar said while addressing a virtual training programme on foreign policy for BJP leaders.
Reacting to the remarks, Pakistan's Foreign Office (FO) issued a statement, saying the Indian foreign minister's statement had vindicated Pakistan's long standing stance on "India's negative role" at the global financial watchdog.
"Pakistan has always been highlighting to the international community the politicisation of FATF and undermining of its processes by India,” the foreign office said. “The recent Indian statement is just further corroboration of its continued efforts to use an important technical forum for its narrow political designs against Pakistan.”
Last October, Pakistani law minister Farogh Naseem said Pakistan’s case would serve as a test of the “fairness” of the global financial watchdog.
“The FATF people are good people. I'm not being critical against them,” the law minister said. “But as long as these (FATF) standards are universally applied, and not applied to only Pakistan, and as long as there is no international politics, then we welcome FATF. Let it be applied to everyone.”
Following the June review, Pakistan said it was committed to complying with the FATF evaluation process.
“It was also noted by FATF member countries that Pakistan is subject to perhaps the most challenging and comprehensive action plan ever given to any country,” Pakistani federal minister Hammad Azhar wrote on Twitter at the time.
Azhar, who was then leading Pakistan’s effort to implement the FATF roadmap, said the country was “subject to dual evaluation processes of FATF with differing time lines.”
Last year, Azhar said FATF had acknowledged that any blacklisting, meaning further downgrading of the country’s status, was off the table now.
But FATF president Pleyer said last June the risk of Pakistan being put on the blacklist had not gone, and the country must continue to work on outstanding action points to fix its financial monitoring mechanisms.