FATF reports of Saudi Arabia voting against Pakistan

Foreign Office spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri on Thursday rejected "false media reports" regarding Saudi Arabia's role within the assessment of Pakistan’s Financial Action Task Force (FATF) action plan.

The representative "completely dismissed the story coursing on some of the media as bogus and ridiculous", said a public statement.

Before the day, Azhar Mashwani, Punjab boss pastor's central individual for advanced media, tweeted that reports of 'Saudi Arabia casting a ballot against Pakistan in FATF' were phony information which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would give an assertion on this.

"Pakistan and Saudi Arabia appreciate solid brotherly ties and also the two nations have consistently helped out each other on all problems with respective, territorial, and worldwide significance," said the assertion by the representative.

"Pakistan greatly values its relations with the brotherly Asian nation and firmly rejects such malicious propaganda."

A virtual meeting of the FATF, from Oct 21-23, will decide if Pakistan should be excluded from its ‘grey list’, supported a review of Islamabad’s performance to fulfill global commitments and standards on the fight against concealment and terror financing (ML&TF).

The FATF plenary was earlier scheduled in June but Islamabad got an unexpected breather after the worldwide watchdog against financial crimes temporarily postponed all mutual evaluations and follow-up deadlines within the wake of grave health risk following the Covid-19 pandemic. The Paris-based agency also put a general pause within the review process, thus giving additional four months to Pakistan to fulfill the necessities.

The plenary had formally placed Pakistan within the grey list in June 2018 because of ‘strategic deficiencies’ in its AML/CFT regime after a push from India supported by the US, the united kingdom, and a few European countries.

The FATF will examine if the country had demonstrated remedial actions and sanctions applied in cases of AML/CFT violations, referring to terrorist financing (TF) risk management and TFS (terror financing sanctions) obligations.

The FATF also will judge if competent authorities were cooperating and taking action to spot and taking enforcement action against illegal money or value transfer services (MVTS) and had proven implementation of cross-border currency and bearer negotiable instruments (BNI) controls in any respect ports of entry, including applying effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions.

Pakistan has also to work out if enforcement agencies (LEAs) were identifying and investigating the widest range of terror financing activity which TF investigations and prosecution target designated persons and entities, and people performing on behalf or at the direction of the designated persons or entities besides showing TF prosecutions end in effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions.