Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin has claimed that the Financial Action Task Force’s recent decision to keep Pakistan on its ‘grey list’ was politically motivated which was taken under the influence of some powerful nations, Khaleej Times reported.

“The decision was taken to pressurise the country over its strategic policy decisions,” Tarin, who is in Dubai, said this in an interview with the UAE based English newspaper published on Saturday.

The global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog on Friday announced its decision to keep Pakistan on its grey list despite the country completing 26 of the 27 action items in its 2018 action plan.

“Since June 2021, Pakistan has taken swift steps towards improving its AML/CFT regime and completed 6 of the 7 action items ahead of any relevant deadlines expiring. Pakistan should continue to work to address the one remaining item in its 2021 action plan by demonstrating a positive and sustained trend of pursuing complex ML investigations and prosecutions,” it said in its statement.

However, Tarin said the country would exit the FATF’s grey list this year as it has already achieved almost all targets set by the task force.

Moreover, Energy Minister Hammad Azhar on Saturday said Pakistan’s completion of the FATF technical parameters would be acknowledged soon despite challenges.

“Our fight against ML [money laundering] & TF [terror financing] continues with an unwavering national resolve. We wage war on these activities not just for global compliances but first & foremost for our own sake,” the federal minister tweeted.

“Pakistan is now just 2 items away from completing both its FATF action plans,” Azhar tweeted.

The Paris-based global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog in June 2018 placed Pakistan on its grey list for deficiencies in its counter-terror financing and anti-money laundering regimes. In October 2021, the FATF plenary had announced that Pakistan would continue to stay on the increased monitoring list. Back then, Pakistan had made progress in complying with FATF regulations and completed 30/34 action items. The FATF president had stated that Pakistan has shown high-level political commitment and completed a substantial part of its action items.

In June 2021, Pakistan had completed 26 out of the 27 action items in its 2018 action plan.

In a weekly press briefing on February 19, the Foreign Office said that Pakistan had fully complied with the FATF conditions for exiting its ‘grey list’. He had also said that “only political considerations” of the members of the illicit financing watchdog could hold it back in that category.

“In the context of FATF, we have faithfully complied with and completed all technical requirements and hope that the outcome would be in the positive direction,” FO spokesman Asim Iftikhar had said.

However, he had warned that “there are issues of politicisation by some countries, and that remains a problem”.

How to be removed from FATF's increased monitoring list

In order to be removed from FATF monitoring, a jurisdiction must address all or nearly all the components of its action plan.

Once the FATF has determined that jurisdiction has done so, it will organise an on-site visit to confirm that the implementation of the necessary legal, regulatory, and/or operational reforms is under way and there is the necessary political commitment and institutional capacity to sustain implementation.

If the on-site visit has a positive outcome, the FATF will decide on removing the jurisdiction from public identification at the next FATF plenary. The concerned jurisdiction will then continue to work within the FATF or the relevant FSRB, through its normal follow-up process, to improve its AML/CFT regime.