ISLAMABAD, 06 June 2021, (TON): The Asia Pacific Group (APG) Laundering has improved Pakistan’s rating on 21 of the 40 technical recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) against money laundering and terror financing, but retained it on ‘Enhanced Follow-up’ for sufficient outstanding requirements.

The second Follow-Up Report (FUR) on Mutual Evaluation of Pakistan released by the APG, a regional affiliate of the Paris-based FATF, also downgraded the country on one criteria. The report said Pakistan was re-rated to ‘compliant’ status on five counts and on 15 others to largely compliant and on yet another count to partially compliant.

Overall, Pakistan is now fully compliant with seven recommendations and largely compliant with 24 others. The country is partially compliant with seven recommendations and non-compliant with two out of total 40 recommendations. All in all, Pakistan is now compliant or largely compliant with 31 out of 40 FATF recommendations.

The reporting date for this evaluation was October 1, 2020, which means Islamabad may have made further progress since then that would be evaluated at a later stage.

The APG said “Pakistan will move from enhanced (expedited) to enhanced follow-up, and will continue to report back to the APG on progress to strengthen its implementation of anti-money laundering and combating financing terror (AML/CFT) measures,”.

Pakistan submitted its third progress report in February 2021 and is yet to be evaluated.