Grey listing: Pak says it’s target of politics at FATF
ISLAMABAD : Pakistan said it was made a “target of politics” at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meeting, which has voted to place the country on its “grey list” over its record on money laundering and terror financing.
Pakistan’s de-facto finance minister Miftah Ismail said his country was made a “target of politics” despite its tangible efforts to crack down on money laundering and terror financing.
“What do [they] want? They just want to humiliate Pakistan. Pakistan is not a big money launderer,” said Ismail, who is the prime minister’s adviser on finance. “If they were bothered about terror financing, they would work with us, they would see how much we have done and [what more] we will do till June,” he told Geo TV.
Putting up a brave front, the adviser said that Pakistan was placed on the list between 2012 and 2015, but the stock market still grew by 3%.
He said the fundamentals of the country’s economy are strong. “Nothing is going to happen before June… [but even then] nothing really will happen to Pakistan. It is not a big issue.”
Echoing the advisor’s stance, Pakistan’s interior minister Ahsan Iqbal said, “The resolution against us was on political grounds to pressurise Pakistan. We were on this watch list till 2015 and despite this, we grew the country’s economy. It is wrong to speculate that this will have dire economic consequences on the country.”
“We are taking steps not to please the US but for our own benefit. We will follow our own agenda to achieve national goals,” he told reporters.
Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed, whose Jamaatud-Dawah and Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation were targeted by Pakistan ahead of the FATF meeting, on Saturday alleged that the US had made a plot against his “charities” that made the government act against them.
Saeed said the Presidential ordinance had been passed to cripple the JuD’s “patriotic” work because the US and several other external forces were not happy with the JuD volunteers working for Pakistan through their educational institutions, ambulances and hospitals.
“We united the nation against America, that’s why the US administration is unwilling to further tolerate the JuD’s effective role in the country,” Saeed said in a statement.