Ahead of Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) plenary session which is going to be held in Paris on Friday, its sub-group has made the recommendation to keep Pakistan in the ‘grey list.’
Despite its intense lobbying and backing from countries like China, Islamabad has failed to get itself out of the grey list. Pakistan had gained support from the United States and other western countries at a meeting of the Asia Pacific Joint Group of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in Beijing last month.
The news comes after last week, a court in Pakistan sentenced Hafiz Saeed founder of Lashkar-e Taiba and the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attack, to 11 years in jail in two cases related to the financing of terror.
International Co-operation Review Group (ICRG), the reviewing group, decided to keep Pakistan on the grey list. A recommendation by ICRG indicates the final decision at the plenary session which is not likely to be overturned.
India, however, wanted Pakistan to be put under a more stringent black list by the France based organisation which would have affected the Islamic nation’s already weak economy.
At the last plenary session, Pakistan had addressed only five of the 27 tasks given to it to control funding to terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, responsible for a series of attacks in India. Pakistan was given time till February 2020 to fulfill its commitments.
Last year FATF had reprimanded Pakistan to swiftly complete its full action plan by the next plenary in February 2020 and asserted that in an otherwise situation, it would take action including urging members to advise their financial institutions to give special attention to business relations/transactions with Islamabad.