ISLAMABAD: 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 the 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 a 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.
He said that Pakistan had suffered a huge economic loss of more than $38 billion because of the FATF’s decision of retaining the country on its grey list.
Rehman Malik expressed that despite clear evidence of involvement in terror financing, money laundering, and now even in a heinous crime of nuclear proliferation, India was being spared and no legal action was being initiated against it.
He stated that the people of Pakistan were justified to pose few questions from FATF as to why Pakistan was being dealt with differently from India. “India is sponsoring terrorism through heavy financing using RSS and Daesh in Kashmir, involved in nuclear proliferation and money laundering, why not being made the subject of legal action by FATF,” he questioned.
In his presser, he questioned President FATF that why FATF had not investigated the terror financing by India to Daesh?
Answering a question regarding changing situation in Afghanistan, Rehman Malik said the US withdrawal from Afghanistan without a political solution would have a dangerous impact on the region as the Taliban were inching towards Kabul.
He said that Pakistan played a great role in arranging the Doha dialogue for which Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa’s efforts were highly appreciable.
He said that Pakistan also played a role in an agreement between the United States and Taliban but Pakistan was kept away from the ongoing peace process.
He advised the government that since the pressure of Afghan refugees might increase in the given situation so no one should be allowed to enter Pakistan without biometric identification.
