FATF 27 points to be implemented by Jan 2020: Azhar

PTI minister says autonomous global money-laundering watchdog secretariat would be established

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Hammad Azhar has said that Pakistan would implement the 27 recommended measures of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) by January 2020.

Azhar made these remarks while addressing a news conference with the officials of financial monitoring unit, foreign ministry and Necta in Islamabad.

The minister said that in order to achieve the targets, an autonomous FATF secretariat would be established for better coordination between the federation, provinces and different institutions.

The secretariat would work under the minister for economic affairs, while for the implementation on FATF action plan, the institutions are further being made autonomous and strong and legislation would be done for the purpose.

The sectors of jewelry, precious stones, programme of national savings and Pakistan Post will be completely regulated.

He said that Pakistan would complete all the clauses of FATF action plan by 2020.

Azhar remarked that Pakistan had made progress on the FATF action plan during the last 10 months.  He said that countries take two and half years to get cleared from the grey list, while Pakistan had been in the grey list for the last quarter past one year.

He observed that investigations of more than 700 cases of financial assistance to terrorists had been carried out and 64,000 NGOs had been mapped.

The economic affairs minister noted that with the implementation of action plan, terrorism and money laundering would be completely eradicated.

Azhar maintained that India displayed an irresponsible attitude by trying to use the FATF forum for political mileage.

He mentioned that Pakistan was currently going through two monitoring systems with regard to FATF: Asia Pacific Group and International Cooperation Review Group, which was reviewing Pakistan’s efforts and performance.

Azhar said there was recommendation to merge both the groups which could have increased the problems for Pakistan but due to the efforts of Islamabad, the merger was not done.

Pakistan would complete implementation on 27 recommended measures of FATF until  January next year, while 40 conditions of Asia Pacific Group would be fulfilled until October next year.

The minister said that 22 out of 27 points had been partially completed; while there had been advancement on 36 out of 40 conditions of Asia Pacific Group.

The next session of FATF will be held in February next year, while the report will be submitted in the first week of January.

Speaking about Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazul Rehman’s sit-in, Azhar said apparently there were two objectives of the protest.

First one was to push the Kashmir issue at the backburner on the national and international front and the second was to damage the image of Pakistan.