Khar lauds reforms to improve Pakistan’s AML/CFT regime

Foreign Office says minister of state chairs a meeting of the National FATF Coordination Committee

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar on Thursday chaired a meeting of the National FATF Coordination Committee at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad.

The minister was given detailed briefings on recent legal, policy and administrative actions to improve the effectiveness of Pakistan’s Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regime, the Foreign Office said in a statement.

Khar expressed satisfaction with the trajectory of reforms and appreciated the collective, system-wide efforts in bringing Pakistan’s AML/CFT regime at par with international standards, which remains a top priority of the government.

The meeting was attended by senior officers from the National FATF Secretariat, ministries of finance, foreign affairs, interior, law and justice, State Bank of Pakistan, Financial Monitoring Unit, and Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, Federal Board of Revenue, National Counter-Terrorism Authority, Federal Investigation Agency, Anti-Narcotics Force, and the National Accountability Bureau.

Earlier in June this year, the global dirty money watchdog announced that Pakistan had substantially completed its two action plans, covering 34 items, as part of a bid to get off the grey list on which it has been since 2018 – a decision that would end the threat of Islamabad being put on the black list.

Also read: Pakistan all but exits grey list

The FATF, while kicking off the process to remove Pakistan from the grey list, had said an on-site visit was warranted to verify that reforms had begun and were being sustained, as well as that the necessary political commitment remained in place to sustain improvement in the future.

The Pakistani authorities had said that the global body will send a mission to Pakistan next month to determine the veracity of the government’s claim that it has fully implemented all the 34 conditions that the FATF had set in February 2018 and then in June 2021. Pakistan had been asked to implement the conditions in 15 months but it took around four years due to the complexity of the issues.

The FATF’s decision will now require commitments from all the Pakistani stakeholders to prove to the FATF upcoming mission that no serious deficiency remains in its AML and CFT regimes.

The FATF handout noted that since June 2018, Pakistan made a high-level political commitment to work with the FATF and Asia Pacific Group to strengthen its AML/CFT regime and address its strategic counter-terrorist financing-related deficiencies.