New Delhi: India on Friday commended Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for its decision to retain Pakistan in the punitive grey list because of its failure to curb terror funding.
The FATF, the global watchdog for terror funding, in its plenary meeting in Paris from February 16-21, noted that the Imran Khan government is yet to implement half of the 27-point action plan to crackdown on financial support to terror groups.
In a major setback, FATF not only kept Pakistan in the grey list, but also threatened to blacklist it if it failed to significantly end financial support to terror groups by June this year. The agreed deadline for compliance was already over in September 2019.
Read:Pakistan to remain in FATF's grey list
"Pakistan will continue in the grey list and all its propaganda and false claims, as in the past, to mislead its public and world at large about exiting the FATF grey list in February 2020 has been decisively proved false," an official in New Delhi said.
Sources said the FATF has strongly asked Pakistan to swiftly complete its full action plan by June 2020. It has also warned Islamabad that if significant and sustainable progress especially in prosecuting and penalising terrorist financing, is not made by the June 2020 plenary, the FATF will black list it.
Pakistan, if blacklisted, will face isolation from the international banking system introducing stricter checks and safeguards on transactions involving the country.
(With inputs from IANS)
