Pakistan asked to do more to combat terror funding

ISLAMABAD: The Asia Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering has retained Pakistan on “enhanced follow-up” status for outstanding requirements.

Islamabad will continue to report back to it on the country’s progress to strengthen its implementation of anti-money laundering and combating financing terror measures, according to a media report on Saturday.

Pakistan was put on the grey list by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in June 2018 and it has been struggling to come out of it. The APG is a regional affiliate of the FATF. The second follow-up report on mutual evaluation released by the APG downgraded it on one criteria.

The report said Pakistan was re-rated to “compliant” status on five counts and on 15 others to “largely compliant” and on yet another count to “partially compliant”.

Dawn newspaper reported that Pakistan is now fully “compliant” with seven recommendations and “largely compliant’” with 24 others. The country is ‘partially compliant’ with seven recommendations and “noncompliant” with two out of a total 40 recommendations.

All in all, Pakistan is now compliant or largely compliant with 31 out of 40 FATF recommendations.

The reporting date for this evaluation was October 1, 2020, which means Islamabad may have made further progress since then that would be evaluated at a later stage. Pakistan submitted its third progress report in February 2021 which is yet to be evaluated.