Pakistan’s anxious eye is on the four-day virtual meeting of the Financial Action Task Force – a Paris-based global money-laundering watchdog – starting on Feb. 22, which is expected to decide whether or not to remove Islamabad from its gray list.
The country has been on the FATF radar since June 2018, when it was placed on its gray list for terrorist financing and money laundering risks after an assessment of the country’s financial system and security mechanism. Since then, Pakistan has been escaping the watchdog’s financial crime blacklist with the support of Turkey, China, and Malaysia.
So far North Korea and Iran are the countries who have been blacklisted by FATF. If Pakistan is blacklisted it will be adversely impact its imports, exports and remittances with difficulties in obtaining international lending.
Source: DAWN and Anadolu Agency