THE FINANCIAL ACTION TASK FORCE ORGANIZATION HAS ISSUED STERN WARNING TO BLACK LIST PAKISTAN FOR NOT ADDRESSING TERROR FINANCING ISSUES

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an inter-governmental body established in 1989 for setting global standards on anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism, has recently listed Pakistan under the Grey List at a Meeting dated 18-10-2019 and issued a warning stating that the country would be blacklisted or declared to be a non-cooperative country, if it fails to take complete action against terror funding and money laundering by February 2020.

India, a member country of FATF since 2010, has, reportedly, been working with FATF to collect credible evidence against Pakistan’s inaction to address the issues of terror funding and money laundering in its country since 2018.

In the said Meeting, FATF made the following observations:

1. That Pakistan failed to establish that it had addressed various issues pertaining to terror-financing and money laundering such as control of funding to terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, seizure of terrorist properties, etc in its country.

• That Pakistan, further, alleged that India has been pushing other countries to black list the country for non-compliance of its 27-point action plan against terror funding and money laundering in its country.

Thereafter, upon conducting various discussions at FATF, Pakistan reportedly managed to secure three votes from Malaysia, Turkey and China to stay out of the black list. However, it was mutually decided that a warning should be issued to Pakistan for complete compliance of its 27-point action plan against terror funding and money laundering by February 2020, failing which, FATF would black list the country.

According to various experts, if Pakistan is declared as a non-cooperative or black listed country by FATF, various banks and investors would withdraw their funding and investments from Pakistan. This would have an adverse effect on the economy of Pakistan.

Thus, various diplomatic officials across the world have expressed their gratitude to FATF for the strongly worded statement issued to Pakistan and further, hoped that Pakistan would either comply with all the 27 tasks assigned to it to address terror funding and money laundering issues in its country by February 2020 or would be black listed by FATF.

Harini Daliparthy

Senior Legal Associate

The Indian Lawyer