The Asia Pacific Group (APG) acknowledged Pakistan's efforts to fight corruption and money laundering in the 2nd follow-up report (FUR) on Mutual Evaluation released Friday. The report said Pakistan has largely complied with 31 of FATF's 40 recommendations.

The experts at APG — a regional affiliate of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) —analyzed the progress of Pakistan in addressing the technical compliance deficiencies identified in its Mutual Evaluation Report (MER). And gave technical compliance re-ratings where sufficient progress has been demonstrated.

As per the report, the country has improved on 21 of the 40 technical recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) against money laundering and terror financing. The report only identified actions taken by the government up until 1 October 2020. Meanwhile, Pakistan submitted its third progress report in February 2021.

The APG welcomed the steps that Pakistan has taken to improve its technical compliance and has re-rated Pakistan on Recommendations: 0f 23 recommendations Pakistan had requested re-rating for 5 have been rated as compliant (C); 15 as largely compliant (LC); 1 as partially compliant (PC), and 2 as non-compliant (NC).

"...insufficient progress has been made to justify a re-rating of Recommendation 38, and Recommendation 37 has been re-rated to NC following the implementation of a new law that imposes restrictive conditions on the provision of mutual legal assistance (MLA)," the report noted.

The report further added "Pakistan has 31 Recommendations rated C/LC. Pakistan will move from enhanced (expedited) to enhanced follow-up, and will continue to report back to the APG on progress to strengthen its implementation of AML/CFT measures."

Federal Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar reacted to the APG's re-rating and credited the FATF committee for unprecedented reforms in less than two years. Taking to Twitter, the federal minister said:

"Pak has achieved compliant rating in 31 out of 40 FATF recommendations (MER technical compliance). This is the parallel scrutiny being undertaken at FATF besides our current action plan. Upgrade of 20 criteria in less than 2 years is unprecedented in FATF history for any country."

He further added that the outcome is a result of major legal reforms:

FATF will meet later this month to review Pakistan's status. Based on the performance report the anti-money laundering watchdog will decide if to remove Pakistan from its grey list.