Minister for Interior Ijaz Shah told Prime Minister Imran Khan in a meeting on Wednesday that Pakistan has met most of the conditions set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to come out of grey list.
The interior minister presented a report to the premier on performance of his ministry and its various departments in the last 20 months – from August 2018 to April 2020 – listing the ministry’s achievements, including implementing majority of the FATF requirements.
FATF is intergovernmental organisation that aims at making policies to combat money laundering and terrorism financing.
FATF placed Pakistan in its grey list in June 2018, asserting that the country has failed to take necessary measures against terror financing on its soil.
FATF decided not to blacklist Pakistan and extended time till end June for the country to complete its action plan as a “vast majority of FATF members recognised Islamabad’s enormous efforts to improve its counter-terror financing regime”.
The interior ministry report state that, “Despite the challenges of the task assigned and concerns pertaining to internal security, the ministry was able to deliver by meeting the majority of the requirements of the FATF and taking some kinetic and non-kinetic measures including legislative amendments.”
Report also entailed that the ministry proscribed two main and 11 affiliated organisations as well as froze 976 movable and immovable properties of proscribed outfits – alongside taking over schools, colleges, hospitals, dispensaries, ambulances etc, of the proscribed organisations into government’s control.
Conviction of 200 plus main individuals and supporters as well as recovery of funds amounting to Rs2,400 million for management of taken over facilities were also listed as achievements in the report.
Moreover, amendments in Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 (ATA) were made in line with the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Act, adding that the ministry completed scrutiny of 4th schedule list, divided the 4th schedulers into 3 categories and formed standard operating procedures (SOPs) for their management.
According to the report submitted to the PM, the interior ministry also worked on preparation of asset freezing rules to regulate the freezing of assets. It introduced Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) law and a total of 84 MLA requests were sent to foreign countries for provision of information and response to all the MLA requests of 2019-20.
