The Financial Intelligence Unit of the United Arab Emirates Central Bank has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Pakistan to tackle financial crimes. According to a memorandum of understanding signed with Pakistan's Financial Monitoring Unit, the two countries will work together to promote financial stability and combat money laundering and terrorist financing, keeping in mind that the current government has taken several steps to eradicate financial crime from the country. Including the recent legislation in Parliament in this regard.
This legislation is also due to be removed from the gray list of the Financial Supervisory Authority (FATF) and a meeting of the Parliament has been convened next week for further legislation in this regard. The FATF's Plannery Group had placed Pakistan on a gray list in June 2018 for "strategic shortcomings" in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.
In February, 2019, the FATF warned Pakistan to keep its promises and take action against those involved in crimes such as terrorist financing and money laundering in view of the threat of global sanctions. The government machinery was immediately mobilized to show good results within 2 months. In October 2019, the FATF decided to keep Pakistan on the gray list till February this year and gave a deadline to implement the 27-point action plan. Financial Action Task Force Islamabad was directed to take further steps while expressing serious concern over the lack of efficiency in addressing the threat of terrorist financing.
Later in February, in Paris, the FATF gave Pakistan four months to complete its 27-point action plan against money laundering and terrorist financing. It was clarified on this occasion that Pakistan had worked on 14 points of the action plan but had not taken significant steps related to 13 other targets. All deadlines for completion have passed and only 14 points have been completed on a large scale while 13 targets were left out.
The FATF had urged Pakistan to expedite the completion of its entire action plan by June 2020 or else it would be added to the watch list, commonly referred to as the Watchdog Blacklist. I got 5 months extra time to submit the report of FATF to Pakistan regarding 13 foolproof arrangements against money laundering and financing of terrorism.
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