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Pak faces possibility of being blacklisted, needs to do significant work: FATF President

"There is absolutely a possibility that Pakistan could be put on the blacklist," FATF president Marshall Billingslea said.

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Financial Action Task Force or FATF president Marshall Billingslea has said Pakistan has to do "significant work to meet the obligations they themselves undertook" as part of there high-level commitments and the country is "lacking in almost every respect of action plan."

Following its greylisting in 2018 Islamabad had made a high-level political commitment to work with the FATF to deal with “structural deficiencies” in its anti-money laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) or simply put-- acting on the financing of terror.

Speaking at the end of FATF plenary which happened in Orlando, Florida last week and whose audio was provided on Monday, Billingslea said, "There is absolutely a possibility that Pakistan could be put on the blacklist. That is a decision to be taken in future plenary because the period of the action plan has not yet expired, the action plan runs through September of this year."

The next plenary of FATF will be in Paris in Oct during which Pakistan will be assessed if it was able to full fill its commitments.

Coming strongly on Pakistan, FATF president said, "Pakistan does not appreciate or chooses not to acknowledge the transnational and transborder terrorist financing risk they face."

Pakistan was slammed by the global anti-terror financing body during the Orlando meet last week after failing to meet its commitments 2 times--first in January 2019 and then May 2019.

Billingslea explained, "Pakistan was cautioned in February at the plenary that they have missed almost all of the January milestones and they were urged not to fail milestones in May. Unfortunately, Pakistan yet again missed May Milestones."

Adding, "The action plan is set to complete in September. so this was not the plenary we were to discuss blacklisting, this was the plenary how far or how far behind Pakistan is on its action plan, and I must say, they are far behind and there is much that must be done, by September."

If Islamabad fails to implement the action plan by September then the FATF may consider next steps, which includes a possible blacklisting. 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. 

Ready to advise IMF: FATF 

FATF also said it is ready to "provide advice" to International monetary fund or IMF if requested by the multilateral Washington based organisation. 

IMF is an observer organisation at the grouping and has a detailed understanding of what the Pakistani action plan but its board has to decide on what conditionality they will like to apply.

Remember International monetary fund has agreed on a $6bn bailout for Pakistan's beleaguered economy for 3 years but it has to be approved by the board of the organisation.

This is the 13th bailout the south Asian country got since 1980s. The last time Pakistan govt got bailout from IMF was in 2013.

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