SYDNEY/PARIS: The Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) published its report on money-laundering and terror-financing in Pakistan, a week before its Paris-based G7 counterpart, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), is set to announce its decision to remove or retain Islamabad in its grey list.
The long-awaited 228-page report, titled “Mutual Evaluation Report 2019,” would provide a basis for the FATF — the international money-laundering and terror-financing watchdog — to make its decision in an upcoming Paris meeting scheduled for October 13-18, keeping in view Pakistan’s compliance with the parameters it had set earlier.
The APG report states that Pakistan has largely but partially complied with 36 of the 40 parameters set by the FATF at the time of the country’s inclusion in the grey list.
However, it pointed out that Islamabad only missed four of the total 40 parameters that it was to follow in order to be effectively removed from the list.
The four missed parameters comprise:
- DNFBPs (designated non-financial businesses and profession): Customer due diligence;
- Transparency & BO (beneficial owner/ownership) of legal arrangements;
- Regulation and supervision of the DNFBPs;
- Mutual legal assistance: freezing and confiscation
The report further said Pakistan’s performance on international cooperation was moderate.
It stressed on the country’s weakness pertaining to risk, policy and coordination; supervision; preventive measures; legal persons and arrangements; financial intelligence; money-laundering (ML) investigations and prosecution; confiscation; terror-financing (TF) investigations and prosecution; TF preventive measures and financial sanctions; proliferation-financing (PF) financial sanctions.
Last month, a high-level Pakistani delegation led by Economic Affairs Minister Hammad Azhar had attended a two-day meeting with the APG to discuss Islamabad’s progress on the FATF action plan.
