FATF moot begins amid move to put Pakistan on grey-list

Monitoring Desk

PARIS: The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global anti-money-laundering watchdog, six days meeting begins today (Sunday) in Paris to review proposals including putting Pakistan on the terror financing list.

The FATF is an intergovernmental organization which was founded in 1989 with the aim to maintain grey and black lists for identifying countries, which are failed to take appropriated steps to control money-laundering and terror financing.

The FATF announced on Saturday that meeting will be held from Feb 18 to 23 in which over 700 delegates from the FATF global network, as well as the United Nations, Inter­nati­onal Monetary Fund, World Bank and other partners, will attend the meetings.

The United States and its allies trying to put Pakistan on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) money-laundering and terror-financing watchlist and forward a motion in this regard.

The US and its allies including UK, France and Germany blamed Pakistan for non-compliance with measures to eliminate terror financing and want to put Pakistan on the grey list.

Federal Minister Miftah Ismail hoped that Pakistan will not be put on the watchlist whether the US did not take back the motion. Earlier, Pakistan was put on the grey list of FATF in February 2012 and its name was removed after three years.

According to the financial experts, the FATF cannot impose the sanction on any country despite adopting the motion, but the nomination of a country can affect its international transactions. Placement of a country on the grey list will hike cost doing business locally as this move will increase the cost of making international transactions.

While talking to International media outlet a senior US official told that the purpose of the motion was to urge Pakistan for taking action against terrorists without any discrimination.

Since unveiling the South Asia strategy, US President Donald Trump is ramping up the pressure on Pakistan to curb alleged safe havens on its ground, besides urging him to take action against Haqqani Network.