Commending all state institutions for completing the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) action plan, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar said on Saturday that it would be premature to celebrate the task force’s announcement made last night because the process to remove Pakistan from the grey list has just begun.
Hina Rabbani, who led the delegation to the FATF plenary in Berlin, told a news conference in Islamabad that Pakistan is one step closer to being removed from the grey list by October 2021, following an on-site inspection by a task force team.
“The first and final process of removing Pakistan off the grey list has begun,” she explained.
“It is the beginning but not the end of the path [towards removal from the grey list],” she said, adding that they will need to keep working on this.
“Before any state is removed off the grey list, a technical team visits the county,” the state minister explained. She insisted that Pakistan’s primary objective is to stop financial aid to terrorists.
She attributed the accomplishment to “the extensive reforms that have been implemented in Pakistan in the Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML-CFT) sector, as well as the continued momentum of our efforts and the outcomes of those efforts.”
“Because, as you can see, the first action plan took us significantly longer to produce, but this one was done ahead of schedule, and this was something that was very highly recognized throughout the plenary by all members,” she explained.
“FATF members highly appreciated and welcomed Pakistan’s excellent and rapid progress,” the state minister for foreign affairs stated.
FATF, according to Khar, has acknowledged the completion of both action plans, the progress made, and Pakistan’s commitment to improving its AML/CFT stance.
Sharing specifics of the plenary meeting talks, the minister stated that the watchdog had concluded “by consensus” that Pakistan had met all technical benchmarks and had accomplished all criteria of both action plans — 2018 and 2021.
“As a consequence of this, which we see as no less than a tremendous accomplishment and a great achievement,” she added, “FATF has now authorized an on-site visit of its technical team to Pakistan to validate the process of reform implementation.”
Concerning the dates of the on-site examination, Khar stated that the authorities involved are working closely with the FATF to schedule their team’s visit at “mutually suitable periods” in order to complete the process before the October plenary.
