Slow In Combating Terror, FATF’s Asia Pacific Group Keeps Pak In Enhanced Follow-up List

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In a major setback to Pakistan, the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF’s) Asia Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering has kept the country on “Enhanced Follow-up List” for its slow progress on the technical recommendations of the FATF to fight terror financing. According to sources, Pakistan’s progress has remained unchanged — non-compliant on four counts.

According to an APG report as reported by news agency ANI , “Whilst Pakistan published a National Risk Assessment (NRA) on Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing in 2017, the mutual evaluation report (MER) identified gaps in the process of developing and identifying threats, vulnerabilities and risks. The assessment of terrorist-financing risk was identified as “perfunctory only”.”

“The MER also found that the 2017 NRA had not yet been widely circulated to private sector stakeholders and that sectors assessed as higher risk or higher vulnerability in Pakistan were not yet subject to comprehensive Anti-money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (AML/CFT) measures,” the statement said.

Earlier, Pakistan had requested re-ratings for Recommendations 1, 6, and 29, which were all rated as “partially compliant”.

The APG stated that while insufficient progress has been made to justify a re-rating of Recommendation 1, Pakistan has raised a major disagreement with the process, analysis and rating for Recommendation 6, related to targeted financial sanctions on terrorism and terrorist financing.