FATF, Pakistan and the Blacklist- all you need to know about #BlacklistPakistan trending on Twitter

By Navya Sriram Published on February 22, 2021, 23:10 IST

As of 22nd February, Monday, #BlacklistPakistan is seen to be trending on Twitter. This may seem arbitrary to some. Here’s why this subject is trending.

The FATF or the Financial Action Task Force is an intergovernmental organisation founded in 1989 on the initiative to develop policies to combat money laundering. In 2001, its mandate was expanded to include terrorism financing.

The FATF grey list is the agency’s official list of countries and jurisdictions that are identified as having strategic deficiencies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing. Pakistan has been in the FATF’s ‘greylist’ since June 2018 when it was presented with a 27-point action plan.

Recently, The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held three-day virtual Plenary session, during which Pakistan’s performance in terms of measures taken against money laundering and terror funding will be reviewed once again, will start on Monday.

During the last FATF plenary in October 2020, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pakistan was given an extension for full compliance with the recommendations till the next session. It had not fully complied with six of the 27 directives, while the other obligations were largely met.

Pakistan’s inaction against several organisations linked to banned terror outfits and global terrorists such as Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar and Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Hafiz Saeed and its operations chief Zaki Ur Rahman Lakhvi impacted the FATF decision, reports The Hindu.

As of now, some users on Twitter are strongly opining that Pakistan must be demoted to the blacklist.

The FATF blacklist, now called the “Call for action”, was the common shorthand description for the Financial Action Task Force list of “Non-Cooperative Countries or Territories”.