Pakistan’s Finance Minister Asad Umer said on Friday that the government will address all 27 deficiencies pointed out by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in the country’s anti-money laundering system earlier this year.
Addressing to the Senate, the upper house of the country’s parliament, the minister said that the National Executive Committee (NEC) headed by himself will review the action plan so as to handle the deficiencies related to currency smuggling and alleged terror financing by proscribed organizations in Pakistan.
On June 30 this year, the FATF formally put Pakistan in a grey list and identified it as a country with “strategic deficiencies” in its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regime, notifying the steps the country must take to address the shortcomings.
Pakistan made a commitment to the action plan, which it would implement over the next 13 months. Failure to negotiate the action plan could lead Pakistan to the blacklist, the FATF statement said in June.
The deficiencies identified in Pakistani anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing regime include inadequate monitoring and regulatory mechanisms, low conviction rate on unlawful transactions, poor implementation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and cross-border illicit movement of currency by terrorist groups.
The FATF said it would “closely monitor” Pakistan’s efforts to implement its action plan to accomplish the above objectives through legal, regulatory and operational reforms.
Umer told the Senate that a FATF delegation visited Pakistan earlier in August to review the steps taken by Pakistan.
“The government is taking steps to overcome the deficiencies identified by the FATF,” said the minister, adding that Pakistan had reservations about the procedure used for putting Pakistan on the grey list and that there is no chance of any kind of immediate sanctions on Pakistan.
