Pakistan on Monday urged the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to take notice of India’s continuing malicious campaign against the country and the attempts to politicise the proceedings of the international body.
In a statement issued by the Foreign Office, Pakistan rejected the recent comments by the Indian defence minister claiming that FATF can blacklist Pakistan anytime. “The statement reinforces Pakistan’s concerns, repeatedly highlighted to the FATF membership, about India’s attempts to politicise the FATF proceedings to further its narrow, partisan objectives,” the FO statement said.
The Foreign Office maintained that India’s incessant smear against Pakistan and blatant partisanship also call into question its credentials to be co-chair of the Asia-Pacific Joint Group that reviewed Pakistan’s progress to implement the FATF Action Plan. “Our concerns in this regard have been previously brought to the attention of FATF members,” the statement said. “It is important for FATF to ensure that the process remains fair and unbiased,” it added.
FO says New Delhi’s incessant smear campaign against Islamabad calls into question its credentials to be co-chair of Asia-Pacific Joint Group
The FO clarification comes a week ahead of FATF’s review meetings in Paris between Oct 13-18 that will determine whether Pakistan should remain or move out of the grey list or be put on the blacklist.
In an exclusive interview with Al-Jazeera TV last month, Prime Minister Imran Khan had alleged that New Delhi was trying to bankrupt Pakistan and push it into the FATF blacklist.
A Mutual Evaluation Report (MER) released on Sunday by the Asia Pacific Group (APG) – a regional affiliate of the FATF – showed that Pakistan was ‘non-compliant’ on four out of 40 recommendations of the APG on the effectiveness of the anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism system. The report based on Pakistan’s performance as of October 2018 showed that the country was fully compliant only on one aspect relating to financial institutions secrecy laws. It was found partially compliant on 26 recommendations and largely compliant on nine others.
