ISLAMABAD: The Asia-Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG), held its 22nd Annual Meeting in Canberra, Australia from 18-23 August 2019. A senior level delegation from Pakistan headed by Dr. Reza Baqir, Governor State Bank of Pakistan, attended the meeting. The meeting adopted Pakistan’s third Mutual Evaluation Report (MER).
The MER covers the period February to October 2018 and identifies a number of areas where further actions are required to strengthen the AML/CFT framework. The report does not cover the areas in which Government of Pakistan has made substantial progress since October 2018.
In the discussions, the Pakistan delegation welcomed engagement with the international community in its efforts to countering terrorism and money laundering. The delegation briefed APG members on the steps taken in recent times for improving its AML/CFT framework as well as the actions for ensuring effective implementation of the FATF Action Plan. The Pakistan delegation also held a number of bilateral meetings with key delegations to brief them on recent progress by Pakistan in implementing the FATF Action Plan.
As background Pakistan is a member of the APG since 2000. APG is a regional body of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and requires its members to undergo mutual evaluation on the compliance of its anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) framework with FATF recommendations.
During the meetings, Pakistan’s Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) also signed an MoU with the China Anti Money Laundering Monitoring and Analysis Center (CAMLAC) on exchange of financial intelligence.
