After four years, Pakistan has been removed from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) “grey list,” even though Russia has been further penalised for the Ukraine War by being excluded from future projects with the terror financing watchdog. FATF President Raja Kumar made the statement in Paris. Until Friday (October 21), Pakistan was the most important country on the list. After it (along with Nicaragua) was taken off the list, 23 countries remained under watch.
FATF maintains a “grey list” of nations regularly and watches closely. In essence, these are countries that have, in the assessment of the FATF, failed to prevent international money laundering and terrorist financing, and are, therefore, on a global watchlist for bad behaviour. Until Friday (October 21), Pakistan was the most important country on the list. Among these countries are the Philippines, Syria, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Uganda, Morocco, Jamaica, Cambodia, Burkina Faso, and South Sudan, and the tax havens of Barbados, Cayman Islands, and Panama.
When a jurisdiction is subject to more scrutiny, according to FATF, “it indicates the government has promised to promptly rectify the identified strategic shortcomings within agreed deadlines and is subject to further checks.” These nations are currently “actively cooperating with the FATF to resolve strategic inadequacies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist funding, and proliferation finance,” according to the statement.
On October 21, the FATF announced that “Pakistan has strengthened the effectiveness of its AML/CFT regime and addressed technical deficiencies to meet the commitments of its action plans regarding strategic deficiencies that the FATF identified in June 2018 and June 2021, the latter of which was completed in advance of the deadlines, encompassing 34 action items in total.”
Therefore, it said, “Pakistan is no longer subject to the FATF’s increased monitoring process.”
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