Pakistan may be off the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list soon. The intergovernmental agency after its plenary meeting in Berlin decided to carry out an on-site visit to Pakistan and said the country has met most of the 34 parameters that it was asked to. The task force in a statement said, “At its June 2022 Plenary, the FATF made the initial determination that Pakistan has substantially completed its two action plans, covering 34 items, and warrants an on-site visit to verify that the implementation of Pakistan’s AML/CFT (anti-money laundering/counter financial terrorism) reforms has begun and is being sustained, and that the necessary political commitment remains in place to sustain implementation and improvement in the future.”
It added, “In particular, Pakistan demonstrated that TF (terror financing) investigations and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terrorist groups and that there is a positive upwards trend in the number of ML (money laundering) investigations and prosecutions being pursued in Pakistan, in line with Pakistan’s risk profile.”
The move essentially means that post the on-site visit of the FATF team, Pakistan could be taken off the grey list. While Pakistan led by minister of state for external affairs Hina Rabbani Khar expressed satisfaction, India is watching the situation apprehensively. “With this, the process of taking Pakistan off the grey list begins,” Khar said in a statement.
Government officials in India said that the development is on expected lines. Officials said that the process of taking Pakistan off the grey list could have begun after Pak foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in May on the sidelines of the UN.
“Post this meeting, most Western nations and China cleared Pakistan in an emergency meeting,” an officer aware of the development told News18.
The security grid in India has been alerted following this development as New Delhi believes Pakistan could up the ante once again on Kashmir.
“Agencies have been alerted to increased threat in Kashmir post this development. Pak agencies are already pushing small arms and IEDs into Kashmir in a big way. Jammu and Kashmir police and other agencies have scaled up preparations,” an officer said.
India believes its FATF heat and terror financing evidence against Pakistan had forced the world to blacklist the country pushing Islamabad’s direct financing of terror groups onto the back burner. Taking Pakistan off the grey list could make the ISI go all out once again in financing Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and others.
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