Boosting capacity and compliance

Financial Action Task Force team is meeting with Pakistani government representatives

For some time whispers have been going around about the meetings of the visiting Financial Action Task Force team with Pakistan government representatives that seemed to confirm fears that all is not well with the country’s latest compliance records on the basis of which Islamabad was expecting a happy and longer reprieve from the global body.

Apparently there are still glaring gaps in the implementation of FATF recommendations, most of these relate to anti-money laundering, terror financing, regulation of non-profit organisations and financial monitoring units. This should come as a rude shock to key government ministries and parliament given the extent of the legal, regulatory and policy work supposedly undertaken to address the problem of implementation.

This is disappointing because in the weeks leading up to the FATF team’s visit representatives of NACTA, the SECP and the World Bank presented crucial technical information which would have enabled civil society organisations to mimise their risks to the forms of abuse that permit terror finance and money laundering to proliferate in the first place.

Rather than wait for the FATF team to release its report, Pakistani officials should call an emergency meeting of all stakeholders to see what else could be done to improve compliance and bring it to the level required of us. Much of the FATF team’s annoyance over compliance seemed to be rooted in the inadequate responses of the FIA, NAB, FBR and SECP.

Not surprisingly the FATF officials could not understand the country’s pointed lack of success in pursuing money-laundering cases in criminal courts. This indeed is an area of major concern and it would be most unfortunate if we do not take robust measures to improve criminal prosecution as well as conviction rates.

If we are to be judged solely on this basis then Pakistani officials should wise up and be fully prepared to make seizures and convictions in money-laundering cases an achievable goal. Local experts believe it is important to establish an effective balance between the implementation of international counter-terror and anti-money laundering regulations and space for civil society to respond to the needs of the poor and the marginalised. So far we haven’t seen the will to do so. 

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2018.

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