Pakistan off FATF Grey List

October 25, 2022

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recently announced that it will take off Pakistan from its grey list.

Key facts

The FATF announced that it will remove Pakistan from the “grey list” of countries because of the country’s significant progress in strengthening legal and government mechanisms and enhancing the monitoring capacity.
This came as a result of the recent plenary session that was held from October 20 to 21 this year.
During the session, the FATF members, including India, reviewed the record of 26 countries and unanimously decided to remove Pakistan from the grey list.
The FATF added The Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Tanzania in the Grey List and moved Myanmar from the grey list to the black list because of the actions taken by the military junta since the coup e’tat took place in February 2021.
A country is placed in the FATF grey list to enhance monitoring to check its progress on measures combating money laundering and terror financing.
Pakistan was included in the grey list in 2018. Since then, it has been provided with two action plans having 34 points calling on the government to implement laws concerning money laundering and counterterrorism.
The action plan mandated Pakistan to maintain a database of terrorists and terror groups operating within its territory and the actions taken by the government to counter them.
Pakistan was included in the grey list from 2012 to 2015. During this period, terror groups like al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad operated without restrictions and designated terrorists like Hafiz Saeed took part in political processes.
In 2021, Pakistan successfully demonstrated the terror finance investigations and prosecution targeting senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated groups by arresting key figures like Hafiz Saeed, 26/11 commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, 26/11 mastermind Sajid Mir and others.

About FATF

Established in 1989 at the G7 summit held in Paris, the FATF is an intergovernmental body that sets international standards for the prevention of international financial crimes that help fund terrorism. Its aim is to create political will among the member countries to put in place legislative and regulatory reforms focusing on these areas.

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