New Delhi
Pakistan is working with the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) to take forward its reforms of measures to counter terror financing and will be subject to an evaluation in due course, Financial Action Task Force (FATF) president Giles Thomson said on Friday.
Thomson declined to go into details of discussions on Pakistan at the FATF plenary meeting that concluded in Paris on Friday on the grounds that they were confidential and only said that Pakistan “will be subject to a further evaluation by the APG in a few years”.
The Indian side raised Pakistan’s failure to crack down on the activities of UN-designated terrorist and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar during the FATF meeting, people familiar with the matter said. India’s case was based on the Taliban regime’s recent denial of Pakistan’s claim that Azhar is currently in Afghanistan, they said.
“The subject of our discussions in the plenary remain confidential,” Thomson told a news conference at the conclusion of the plenary meeting. “I can’t disclose what was or wasn’t discussed in the course of our meetings as that’s confidential.”
Responding to a question about Islamabad’s efforts to counter the terror financing activities of the JeM, he said: “Pakistan is working with the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering – the APG is the FATF-style body – to continue to progress its reforms and those issues that you referred to and the assessment of the situation in Pakistan is what will be examined by the APG when they evaluate Pakistan in their next mutual evaluation.”
Thomson reiterated that Pakistan is subject to an “ongoing engagement with the APG and a future evaluation in due course”. He added that Pakistan “was subject to a robust action plan from the FATF when it was on the grey list”. “It completed the action plan and came off the grey list in October 2022,” he said.
This was the first FATF plenary meeting under the presidency of Thomson of the UK, and delegates from across the financial watchdog’s global network of more than 200 jurisdictions and observer organisations gathered in Paris to discuss evolving threats to global financial integrity and security.
The Indian side focused on Azhar, wanted by New Delhi for several terror attacks such as the 2001 Parliament strike, the 2016 Pathankot airbase assault and the 2019 Pulwama bombing, after the Taliban regime dismissed the contention of Pakistani officials that the JeM founder has been in Afghanistan since 2019.
India also urged Pakistan last month to act against sanctioned terrorists based on its soil instead of resorting to “gimmicks” such as a “phoney announcement” of a bounty for Azhar. Pakistan has maintained a bounty of Pakistani ₹7 million for Azhar for several years.
Pakistan was placed on the FATF’s “grey list” of countries subject to enhanced monitoring during 2018-22 for its failure to counter terror financing, particularly fund-raising and illegal financial transactions by JeM and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and systemic deficiencies in its anti-money laundering framework. It was also cited for its weak implementation of financial sanctions on UN-designated terrorists, and limited terror prosecutions and convictions.
The FATF urged Myanmar on Friday to take action to address “extensive fraud and scam activities emanating from the country” that present significant and growing illicit finance risks. Thomson said the financial watchdog gave “a firm warning of escalated action if we continue to see lack of progress on Myanmar’s action plan”.
The FATF also called on Iran, which is on the “black list”, to address “fundamental deficiencies related to its legal framework which does not adequately criminalise terrorist financing and fails to establish a targeted financial sanctions regime in line with FATF standards”, Thomson said.
