New Delhi: India today said that it expects Pakistan to take ‘credible, verifiable, irreversible and sustainable measures’ on the ‘global concerns’ related to ‘terrorism and terrorist financing’ emanating from any territory under its control, a day after the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) kept Pakistan on grey list after failing to meet deadlines.
Pakistan failed to meet deadlines two times – January 2019 and May 2019.
India also said that Pakistan should take “all necessary steps to effectively implement the FATF Action Plan fully within the remaining time frame, by October 2019.” This is not the first time India has asked Pakistan to take strong steps to dismantle terror infrastructure. India and Afghanistan have both been asking Pakistan to take measures on terror groups on its territory for years now.
After being greylisted in June 2018, Pakistan had made high-level political commitments to address its counter-terrorist financing-related deficiencies which basically means to act on the financing of terrorism.
The global counter-terror body on Friday strongly urged “Pakistan to swiftly complete its action plan by October 2019,” warning, if Islamabad doesn’t comply, “FATF will decide the next step at that time for insufficient progress” which mean a possible blacklisting. Being on the greylist impacts the Pakistani economy which loses $10 billion annually.
The international terror financing (TF) watchdog also asked Islamabad to take steps to ‘address its strategic counter-terrorist financing-related deficiencies’. It further noticed that the country does not “demonstrate a proper understanding of Pakistan’s transnational TF risk.”
FATF’s Asia-Pacific Group (APG), which met in China in mid-May, was not impressed by Pakistan’s action on terror financing. Islamabad was put on the greylist in 2018 which means the country comes under financial jurisdiction with ‘structural deficiencies’ in anti-money laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) or just supports the financing of terror.
In a statement issued after the end of the week-long plenary of FATF in Orlando, Florida, the FAFT strongly urged “Pakistan to swiftly complete its action plan by October 2019 when the last set of action plan items are set to expire.”
It further warned, if Islamabad doesn’t comply by Oct 2019, “FATF will decide the next step at that time for insufficient progress” which could refer to a possible blacklisting.