Who gets credit for the removal from FATF’s grey-list

Who gets credit for the removal from FATF’s grey-list is a hot topic of discussion in Pakistan these days amid of recent developments in FATF.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF)’s notorious ‘grey list’ consists of those countries that do not act correspondingly to resist money laundering and alarming financing but have been officially dedicated to doing so.

It is important to know that who gets credit for the removal from FATF’s grey-list for Pakistan.

Opposed to frantic expectations, FATF didn’t take Pakistan off its “grey-list” on Friday, but it did accepted complete concession of a work plan allocated to Islamabad to demonstrate its global commitment to fighting financial crimes.

Too early to celebrate FATF victory, says Hina

An “on-site” visit by a FATF inspection team would verify the full consent – which may not be possible before October. If verification is successful, Pakistan would formally come off the “grey list” – possibly in February next year.

It’s no mean achievement. It has put Pakistan on the path to exiting the “grey list” after 48 grueling months. And it’s rightly being celebrated as a “remarkable achievement” and a “monumental success”. Who gets credit for the removal from FATF’s grey-list, is an open and interesting questions these days to answer.

Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif sought to claim credit for his own government. First, he rang up his foreign minister, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, to “congratulate” him.

“The entire team of the foreign minister deserves kudos”, he told Bilawal. The young foreign minister couldn’t resist the offer to claim the first feather in his cap.

“I will keep striving to steer Pakistan out of all predicaments,” he reciprocated. Sharjeel Inam Memon, the Sindh information minister who is more vocal on national issues, was also quick to credit Bilawal who, according to him, had “raised the FATF issue on all platforms”.

But I think Bilawal’s deputy, Hina Rabbani Khar, knows it’s unfair to claim credit for something they have little share in.

“Our success is the result of four years of challenging journey,” she wrote on Twitter. This, obviously, means she was talking about the work done by the previous government. However, she said it shouldn’t matter who claims the credit.

I’m sure PM Sharif also knows that he is not giving the credit where credit is due – a politically expedient move.

He may have willfully ignored them, but Imran Khan told his former cabinet members that the “whole country is proud of you” for the FATF victory.

“Hammad Azhar [senior minister in Khan’s cabinet], members of his FATF coordination committee & officers who worked on this task performed exceptionally well.

The whole country is proud of you,” Khan wrote in a Twitter thread while listing his government’s tireless efforts to save Pakistan from the FATF “black list”. Who gets credit for the removal from FATF’s grey-list?

Hours after Khan’s tweets, the military spokesperson also weighed in. Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar, while quoting COAS Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, called it “a monumental effort paving way for Pakistan’s whitelisting”.

And he credited a team at the military headquarters for making it possible. “A core cell at the GHQ steered the national effort and civil-military team which synergised implementation of action plan, made it possible, making Pakistan proud,” the DG ISPR quoted Gen Qamar as saying.

To quickly recap, Pakistan has a chequered history with FATF. And its “grey-list” horrors aren’t new. However, the latest “grey-listing” happened in Feb 2018 when the PML-N was in power.

Who gets credit for the removal from FATF’s grey-list and the answer is till awaited.

India was lobbying hard to have Pakistan “black-listed” – something the policymakers in Islamabad have always dreaded. In June, Pakistan was given a 27-point challenging action plan, followed by another seven-point action plan in 2021.

“We not only averted blacklisting, but also completed 32 out of 34 action items. We submitted a compliance report on remaining two items in April based on which FATF now declared Pakistan’s Action Plan as completed,” Khan wrote in his thread of tweets.