Big blow to Imran Khan’s efforts in FATF
The report of Asia Pacific Group (APG) is a setback for Pakistan. It has been said in the final report of APG that Pakistan has not taken satisfactory steps against the funding money laundering and terrorism.
APG has released its report on money laundering 10 days before the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) composite meeting. In this meeting itself, based on the report, it is to be decided that Pakistan will remain in the grey list.
After the APG report, there is a danger on Pakistan that Pakistan can remain in the grey list in the FATF meeting.
The APG report says that Pakistan did not take concrete steps against terrorist organizations under UN Security Council Resolution 1267. The FATF meeting is to be held between October 13 and 18.
This report is going to disappoint Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan. Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly on September 27, Imran Khan accused India of trying to put Pakistan in the FATF blacklist.
Imran Khan had said, “India wants Pakistan to become financially bankrupt”. We kept trying to negotiate peace with India and India kept on its agenda.
Although the FATF will blacklist Pakistan, it is less likely. This time the position of the chief of the FATF is with Chinese banker Shinjamin Liu and it is being said that this is a relief situation for Pakistan.
In recent weeks, Turkey and Malaysia have come out openly with Pakistan on Kashmir. In the case of FATF, Pakistan can get help from Turkey and Malaysia.
When Pakistan came on the grey list in June 2018, China and Turkey helped Pakistan to avoid getting blacklisted. After all, China had withdrawn its objection to Pakistan.
FATF is an international body, established in 1989 at the initiative of G7 countries. The institution is headquartered in Paris, which makes policies to deal with money laundering happening around the world.
In 2001, it also included the financing of extremism in its policies. The organization makes policies to keep the international financial system right and works towards implementing it.
It has a total of 38 member countries, including India, USA, Russia, UK, China.
Since June 2018, Pakistan is on the radar of money laundering institutions across the world. Pakistan came under the target of these institutions when it was put in the ‘grey list’ in view of the threat of funding extremists and money laundering. The grey list also includes Serbia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Trinidad, Tunisia and Yemen.
Turkey was the only country to openly oppose this proposal brought by India. The United States and Britain were supporting this proposal of India, while China, which had long been with Pakistan, was silent on it at that time.
China has so far been openly supporting Pakistan in all forums but now it is also quiet.
India, a member of the joint group of FATF and Asia Pacific Group wanted Pakistan to be included in the blacklist.
India’s side was that Pakistan has failed to meet international standards in combating financial crimes.
But with the help of China, Malaysia, Turkey, Pakistan saved itself from it. China kept itself completely separate in this whole matter, but it did not benefit in favour of India.
According to the FATF rules of 38 member countries, any country needs the support of three members to avoid blacklisting.
After a meeting of the FATF in Florida last week, an official of Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry admitted that “the clouds of crisis in Pakistan are not yet over.”
The decision to not formally include Pakistan in the blacklist will be announced by the international body at a meeting in Paris next week.
Some officials then told Anadolu News Agency on condition of anonymity, “It is certainly a positive move that Pakistan is not in danger of being immediately blacklisted (by FATF) due to support from Turkey, China and Malaysia. “
Given the sensitivity of the case, the officer was not allowed to make a public statement.
But the official said that Pakistan should have met the deadline of FATF, which was fixed on January 2019. By this time money laundering and other financial shortcomings had to be completely eliminated.
In the month of February this year, the FATF said in a statement, “In view of the slow progress on the action plan items in January 2019, the FATF has urged Pakistan to meet its target, especially the May 2019 deadline. Goals made. “
The organization agreed that Pakistan had made progress towards implementation of the action plan after talking to FATF members last year, but there is a need to put restrictions and favours in this direction.
In a meeting held in Guangzhou, China last month, Pakistan was asked to take more action in this matter as its work was found unsatisfactory on 18 of the 27 indicators in the Action Plan.
In recent months, Pakistan had taken some major steps according to the action plan, which includes getting permission for foreign currency transactions and giving identity cards for currency conversion.
Apart from this, Pakistan has also prosecuted many extremist groups and confiscated their property.
Every year $ 10 billion loss due to grey list
Pakistan Foreign Ministry says that Pakistan is in constant contact with Turkey and other allied countries and is trying to help the officials of these countries to get it out of the ‘grey list’.
Before this, Pakistan had faced a similar situation in the year 2011. At that time it was also put in the grey list. After this, Pakistan was able to come out of the grey list in 2015 only when it successfully implemented the action plan. At this time, Pakistan needs at least 15 votes out of 36 votes to come out of the grey list.
With this list, Pakistan is losing about 10 billion dollars every year.
Originally published at https://www.mubahisa.in.