Pakistan has until February to improve its counterterror financing operations
Fri 18 October 2019:
A global anti-corruption body warned Friday that Pakistan could join a blacklist of nations failing to fight money laundering and terror financing unless it changed course within four months.
“If by February 2020 the country has not made significant progress, we will consider further actions which potentially could include placing the country… on the blacklist,” he said.
Pakistan has until February to improve its counterterror financing operations in line with an internationally-agreed action plan, or risk being blacklisted, a global watchdog said.
The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which tackles money laundering, said on Friday it was concerned that Pakistan had failed to complete the action plan first by a January deadline, then a May deadline and now October.
However, it offered a reprieve to Prime Minister Imran Khan as he works to shore up his country’s faltering economy and attract foreign investments and loans.
Khan, elected last year, has been struggling to stamp out threats from armed groups while coming under pressure over painful austerity measures taken to rectify a shaky economy and conform to the terms of its latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout.
“The Pakistani government has demonstrated strong political will to implement its action plan,” Liu said.
“We will provide all the necessary training and assistance, and we have called on our members and our global network to help in that regard,” he added.
Experts say the move means every international financial transaction with Pakistan will be closely scrutinised, and doing business in Pakistan will become costly and cumbersome.
International agencies could place restrictions on lending money to Pakistan, including key creditors such as the IMF, Asian Development Bank and the World Bank.
Meanwhile, the FATF expressed “disappointment” that Iran has failed to take the necessary steps to be removed from the blacklist and said it is asking all member countries to tighten scrutiny of any financial transactions involving Iran.
Virtual currencies such as bitcoin and Facebook’s Libra are also prompting concern from the FATF, which warned of “new risks” from such products.
It said they’re being “closely monitored” to ensure they are not used to finance terrorism or launder money.
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