Daily Times

Senator A. Rehman Malik has expressed grave concerns over the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) decision for retaining Pakistan on its grey list despite the country meeting 26 of the 27 conditions.

He said that rather than be taken out from the ‘grey list’ for its significant progress on FATF Action Plan, Pakistan was handed over with a new set of six-point action plan which prove FATF’s discrimination towards Pakistan.

Rehman Malik stated that biased and pressurized FATF continued to keep Pakistan in Grey list despite best performance and adding new six demands were unjustified and gross discrimination with Pakistan.

He said “I was expecting it as FATF had enhanced monitoring on Pakistan with ill intentions.”

Rehman Malik added that FATF had stated that all items on both action plans needed to be addressed and goals fulfilled for Pakistan to exit the grey list.

He said that President Pleyer said even after the last remaining item on the original action plan was addressed, delisting would not occur as there was a parallel action plan that was also given and the additional items by the Asia Pacific Group would also need to be addressed.

He said that basically linking the delisting with these new five points and the completion of ongoing investigation and prosecution was cumbersome procedure to meet with the condition of demonstrating that TF (terrorism financing) investigations and prosecutions target persons and entities acting on behalf or at the direction of the designated. He said that he had earlier predicted that FATF was not going to take Pakistan out of its grey list due to political pressure and influence by some countries.

Malik said it was a discriminatory treatment that Pakistan was being retained on its grey list despite addressing 26 points out of 27 points and the remaining one point was also addressed more than 95 %. He said that the people of Pakistan were hoping that FATF would remove Pakistan from the grey list this time.

He termed the new six points as a planned conspiracy, ill-intentions, and gross discrimination against Pakistan to further deteriorate its already affected economy.