—The Asia Pacific Group (APG) has reportedly identified loopholes in real-estate brokerages where large business transactions have remained outside the ambit of legal records.
ISLAMABAD: With the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) reportedly unimpressed by the initiatives taken by Pakistan to curb money laundering, the ministry of finance has prepared a detailed proposal to appease the visiting Asia Pacific Group (APG).
Finance minister Asad Umar is supervising the process of legislation which is needed to remove the lacunae in the existing legal and regulatory framework. According to sources, a meeting of the committee which is looking into legislative matters is scheduled to be held this week.
The visiting team of the Asia Pacific Group (APG) has also reportedly identified loopholes in the legislation, especially in real-estate brokerages where large business transactions remained outside the ambit of legal records.
Though the interim government reportedly presented excuses of lack of mandate for legislation during the visit of the FATF team, the new government was also not completely prepared to answer technical queries from the visiting team. “I also could not understand why the FATF team was here for 12 days. A few days were enough to know what the government had done to comply with the stringent conditions from the FATF, and the 26-point action plan,” said an analyst while talking to Pakistan Today.
According to insiders, the visiting APG team has termed various replies of different institutions unsatisfactory, terming them similar to what it received back in 2014-15.
Though, when compared to the interim government which did not impress the FATF team which paid a visit back in August 2018, the new government has tried to address issues raised by the international body, but there were still many things to do as per the action plan it issued earlier this year to counter money laundering and terror financing.
The authorities are required to upgrade agencies and their human resource assets to be able to handle foreign requests to block terror financing and freeze illegal assets. The authorities are working on strengthening laws for the extradition of those involved in terror financing and money laundering based on requests from FATF-member countries.
A six-member delegation, comprising of members of the Asia Pacific Group on money laundering had visited Pakistan on August 13 – the first trip of its kind by the FATF after Pakistan was officially placed on the grey list.
The FATF team was visiting Pakistan again after a break of almost one month. The visiting team included Scotland Yard’s Ian Collins from the United Kingdom, United States Department of Treasury’s James Prussing, Maldives Financial Intelligence Unit’s Ashraf Abdullah, Indonesian Ministry of Finance’s Bobby Wahyu Hernawan, Peoples Bank of China’s Gong Jingyan, and the Turkish Ministry of Justice’s Mustafa Necmeddin Oztop.
The purpose of the mutual evaluation onsite visit was to assess the effectiveness of Pakistan’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Financing of Terrorism (CFT) regime under the FATF methodology.
The ministries of interior, finance, foreign affairs and law, besides the Securities and Exchange Commission (SECP), the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the National Counter-Terrorism Authority (NACTA), the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), the Anti-Narcotics Force ANF), the Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU), the Central Directorate of National Savings (CDNS) and provincial counter-terrorism departments were available for briefings and explanations.
In June 2018, Pakistan made a high-level political commitment to work with the FATF and the APG to strengthen its AML/CFT regime and to address its strategic counter-terrorism financing-related deficiencies by implementing a 10-point action plan. The successful implementation of the plan and its verification by the APG is a prerequisite for the FATF to remove Pakistan from its grey list.
By January 2019, Pakistan will identify and assess domestic and international terror financing risks to and from its system to strengthen investigations and improve inter-agency cooperation, the FIA, the SBP, the SECP, banks, the interior department as well as all other associated federal and provincial agencies.
By the end of September 2019, as per commitment, Pakistan must comply with the 10-point action plan with the FATF or else it will fall into the black list.
