It will be too early to celebrate FATF’s announcement: Pakistan Minister warns

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, Hina Rabbani, who lead the delegation to the FATF plenary in Berlin, clarified that Pakistan is one step away and hoped that the country will be removed from the grey list by October, 2021, after the planned on-site visit of a team of the task force, reports The News International.

“First and the final phase of removing Pakistan from the grey list has begun,” she said.

“It is the beginning but not the end of the journey [towards exclusion from the grey list]” she said, adding that they will have to continue their efforts in this regard," she said.

“A technical team visits the county before removing any state from the grey list,” said the state minister.

She maintained that stopping financial assistance to terrorists is Pakistan’s top priority.

Pakistan has been on FATF's grey list for deficiencies in its counter-terror financing and anti-money laundering regimes since June 2018.

In June last year, the country was given three months time to fulfil the remaining conditions by October.

However, Pakistan, after completion of three months, was kept in the 'grey list' since it failed to effectively implement the global FATF standards and over its lack of progress on the investigation and prosecution of senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terror groups.