Terror Financing Watchdog Keeps Pakistan On Grey List
- 23-Oct-2020
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Islamabad: Pakistan will continue to remain on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for failing to comply with six of the 27 mandates to check terror funding in the country. The global terrorist financing watchdog said Pakistan on Friday.
Pakistan needs to do more on checking terror funding. FATF president Marcus Pleyer reacted that the country must “impose sanction and prosecute those involved in terror financing”.
The Paris-based FATF had placed Pakistan on the grey list in June 2018 and issued the action plan. The agency’s International Cooperation Review Group has acknowledged that Pakistan had complied with 21 points on the plan.
In February this year, FATF gave Pakistan a four-month grace period to complete its 27-point action plan. The deadline was June, but the agency extended it again due to the postponement of its plenary because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Pakistan’s spot on the list and its progress with respect to the action items was being reviewed at a plenary session of the FATF, which began on October 21 and ended Friday (October 23). While the country hasn’t exited the FATF grey list, it has managed to avert being blacklisted for now.
On Thursday, India had pushed for Pakistan to remain on the FATF Grey List, saying Islamabad had addressed only 21 of the 27 action items on terror financing and money laundering issued to it by the agency.
In August, seeking to wriggle out of the grey list, Pakistan had imposed financial sanctions on 88 banned terror groups and their leaders, including 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar and underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. It won a three-month extension to complete all 27 items because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
