Pakistan will continue to be on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) greylist for not doing enough to curb financing terror on its soil.
This comes despite Pakistan’s cosmetic measures to show that it was acting to crackdown on terror financing with the arrest and sentencing of Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, for financing terror especially after he was declared a global terrorist by the UN.
A PTI report said the FATF warned Pakistan that the anti-terror watchdog will take stern measures against it if Islamabad didn’t put an end to the flow of funds to terror groups like the Lashkar and the Jaish-e-Mohammad. Pakistan, which has been in dire straits, will not be able to access funds or aid from global financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, putting it in a more precarious situation.
The FATF had met in Paris for its group meetings between February 16 and 21 and the announcement came at the end of the meetings. The FATF has set another deadline of June 2020 for Pakistan to comply with 27 points and didn’t move the country to its blacklist. Reports said as of now, Islamabad had just met 13 points.
At the previous FATF session, Pakistan had just met 5 of the 27 points, giving hope that Islamabad will move ahead crossing key asks of the list. This movement in accomplishing more asks is seen as Pakistan’s continued engagement with FATF showing the commitment of its politicians.
In June 2018, the FATF put Pakistan in its grey list and had to comply with the 27 points by October 2019. To escape the grey list, Pakistan needed 12 of a total 39 votes but requires only 3 to escape the blacklist.
Iran and North Korea are on the blacklist. India has been working diplomatically for the last 20 months to isolate Pakistan for its continued funding of terror ops on its soil.
