The Pakistan government will need to make further legislation on at least two counts to meet three outstanding benchmarks of the 27-point action plan of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) before the June deadline, media reports said.

Also, the government will have to submit an updated report within a month to the FATF on the progress on legislation and other steps to be taken to address the outstanding concerns, reports Dawn News.

It was observed that since the government had changed almost three dozen laws over the past year to meet the FATF requirements, there should not be any hurdle in the way of making two more amendments, the Pakistani news paper reported.

Presiding over a meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) on Anti-Money Laundering, Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh asked the Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) and chairman of the FATF Coor­dination Committee and Industries and Production Minister Hammad Azhar to immediately finalise the timelines for additional legislation in consultation with agencies of the federal government and the armed forces, reports Dawn News.

Pakistan has once again been retained in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) 'grey list', giving the south Asian nation yet another jolt recently.

The FATF body examined its efforts to counter terror financing and money laundering.

FATF said in a statement, "Since June 2018, when Pakistan made a high-level political commitment to work with the FATF and APG to strengthen its AML/CFT regime and to address its strategic counter-terrorist financing-related deficiencies, Pakistan’s continued political commitment has led to significant progress across a comprehensive CFT action plan, including by: demonstrating that law enforcement agencies are identifying and investigating the widest range of TF activity, demonstrating enforcement against TFS violations, and working to prevent the raising and moving of funds including by controlling facilities and services owned or controlled by designated persons and entities."

"Pakistan should continue to work on implementing the three remaining items in its action plan to address its strategically important deficiencies, namely by: (1) demonstrating that TF investigations and prosecutions target persons and entities acting on behalf or at the direction of the designated persons or entities; (2) demonstrating that TF prosecutions result in effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions; and (3) demonstrating effective implementation of targeted financial sanctions against all 1267 and 1373 designated terrorists,  specifically those acting for or on their behalf," the statement said.

FATF directed Pakistan to complete its full action plan before June 2021.

(IBNS)