Pakistan continues to remain in the ‘greylist’ of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for its failure to check terror funding, news agency PTI reported quoting its sources.
The global terror financing watchdog also warned Islamabad that stern action will be taken if it fails to check the flow of money to militant groups like the LeT and the JeM.
The development means that it would be very difficult for the country to get financial aid from the IMF, the World Bank and the European Union, making its financial condition even more precarious.
The decision was taken at the plenary meeting of the FATF, which took place in Paris after the conclusion of the February 16-21 group meetings.
Pakistan has been asked to meet with all 27 compliance points by June 2020. The FATF, however, stopped short of recommending the country for the black list. The country has not complied with 13 out of 27 actions that mostly pertain to terror funding, whereas, some of them are related to money laundering.
Pakistan required 12 votes out of a total of 39 for an exclusion from the grey list, whereas, it needs only 3 votes to avoid falling into the blacklist.
Pakistan was placed on the grey list by the FATF in June 2018 and was given a plan of action to complete it by October 2019, or face the risk of being placed on the black list with Iran and North Korea. China, Turkey and Malaysia are learnt to have resisted India’s efforts throughout the last year-and-half. India had lobbied with several countries, from the US to Europe, Australia to West Asian countries, to make the case for blacklisting of Pakistan.
