Islamabad:
Pakistan’s anti-corruption watchdog has established an anti-dollars laundering and terror financing cell to verify monetary crimes and illegal transfer of sources as the nation struggled to exit from the FATF’s grey list.
The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) placed Pakistan on the grey list in June 2018 and asked Islamabad to implement a program of action to curb dollars laundering and terror financing by the finish of 2019 but the deadline was extended later on due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) took action as the nation struggled to get out of the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the Dawn newspaper reported on Monday.
The move comes following the FATF retained Pakistan on its ”grey list” last month for failing to verify dollars laundering, top to terror financing, and asked Islamabad to investigate and prosecute senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terror groups, such as Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar.
The worldwide body against dollars laundering and terror financing also asked Pakistan to work to address its strategically essential deficiencies.
Pakistan will continue to stay on the “increased monitoring list”, FATF president Marcus Pleyer stated on June 25 following the selection had been taken at the conclusion of the FATF’s virtual plenary. “Increased monitoring list” is also identified as the ”grey list”.
A senior official of the anti-graft watchdog told the newspaper that the Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML&CFT) cell would coordinate with the FATF Secretariat and stakeholders concerned to curb dollars laundering and terror financing.
The report stated that the key duty to investigate terror financing situations will nonetheless lie with the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
According to a NAB official, getting a member of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), it was mandatory for the bureau to set up the cell to weed out corruption and make Pakistan corruption-cost-free by adopting the ‘Accountability for All’ policy.
He stated NAB, being the apex anti-corruption agency and mandated to get rid of corruption and corrupt practices, was operating by means of a 3-pronged method of ‘awareness, prevention and enforcement’.
Pakistan has been scrambling in current months to prevent getting added to a list of nations deemed non-compliant with anti-dollars laundering and terrorist financing regulations by the worldwide watchdog, a measure that officials right here worry could additional hurt its economy.
In February, the FATF gave a fourth extension to Pakistan to completely implement a 27-point action program and ‘strongly urged’ it to meet the remaining 3 circumstances about terror financing investigations and the United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Noting that Pakistan has now completed 26 of the 27 action products provided to it in 2018, FATF President Pleyer stated last month the organisation has asked Pakistan to take action against UN-designated terrorists.
The UN designated terrorists based in Pakistan include things like Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Azhar, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Saeed and its ”operational commander” Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi.
Azhar, Saeed and Lakhvi are the most wanted terrorists in India for their involvement in a lot of terrorist acts, such as the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks and the bombing of a CRPF bus in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district in 2019.
The FATF is an inter-governmental body established in 1989 to combat dollars laundering, terrorist financing and other connected threats to the integrity of the international monetary method.
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