The anti-terrorism court in Lahore has indicted Hafiz Saeed in a terror-financing case.
The mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack and chief of terror organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) Hafiz Saeed has been charged by a Pakistan court in a terror funding case.
The anti-terrorism court in Lahore has indicted Hafiz Saeed in a terror-financing case. The terror mastermind has been indicted in the financing through five shell organisations. The court has adjourned the hearing in the case until tomorrow.
The development has come ahead of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) decision whether to blacklist Pakistan for failing to curb terror financing.
The move has also come after as many as 27 FIRs were registered against Hafiz Saeed earlier in July and others by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) of Pakistan's police over charges of terror funding following which the Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief was arrested.
Pakistan was given last and final warning to get its act together by acting on terror financing and money laundering by February of 2020 or it will be blacklisted by Paris based Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
Earlier, FATF President Xiangmin Liu, at the end of week-long FATF meet in Paris said, "Pakistan's failure to fulfil FATF's global standards issue we take very seriously, as a result, FATF is giving very clear warning, if by February 2020 country has not made significant progress, we would consider further action, which will potentially include placing country.. on the blacklist."
He said that the country "has not made sufficient progress" and it "has to do more and do it faster".
The country remains on the grey list of the body and has addressed only 5 of the 27 action plans it had committed to deal with terror financing. All deadlines in the action plans given by Islamabad have now expired, after repeated reminders to act.
Asked if there is interference by any member, FATF president said, "I can tell you, every member of FATF has an equal voice and we treat every country equally."
Pakistan was put on greylist by the FATF last year, causing its economy a loss of US $10 billion annually. A blacklist will further have a detrimental impact on a weak Pakistani economy as investors won't be keen to invest in a country that is prone to terror financing.
The country needs votes of just three members to make sure it is not listed on the blacklist in February for which Islamabad is expected to lobby.
A 5-member Pakistani team led by Hammad Azhar, the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs of the country, was in Paris for the meet that decided that the country would stay in the grey list.
FATF is a technical body, whose main aim is to protect the international financial system. The 30-year-old body works on the consensus of member countries.
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