Desperate Pakistan hires top lobbying firm for US bailout at FATF rather than fight terror

Noting that Pakistan's measures against money laundering and terror financing "is not yet sufficient to justify a re-rating", a regional affiliate of the Financial Action Task Force on Monday retained Islamabad on its 'Enhanced Follow-up' list, according to a media report. The development came only a few weeks ahead of the meeting of the FATF -- the Paris-based global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog -- to decide on 'Naya' Pakistan's grey list status.

Pakistan hires lobbying firm

Meanwhile, PM Imran Khan-led country is believed to now relying on American lobbying firms to find a way out of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list. Several media reports say Texas-based Linden Strategies has been hired by the Pakistan government to lobby with the Donald Trump administration. News reports state that Pakistan is keen to impress upon the Trump administration action taken against terrorists.

And for this reason, Islamabad has sought the help of lobbying firm Linden Strategies which calls itself a "government relations and business development firm providing strategic analysis and advisory to domestic and international clients, including sovereign nations”. The country requires the support of at least 12 out of 39 member states to remove its name from the grey list and this will largely depend on the approach the US will take.

The first Follow-Up Report on Mutual Evaluation of Pakistan released by the Asia-Pacific Group (APG) underlined that the country's progress on the 40 FATF recommendations on the effectiveness of anti-money laundering and combating financing terror (AML/CFT) system largely remained unchanged -- non-compliant on four counts, partially compliant on 25 counts and largely compliant on nine recommendations, the Dawn News reported.

Pakistan has improved its full compliance on only two of the 40 FATF recommendations, the APG report noted. The APG Mutual Evaluations is a peer-review system to determine whether countries meet the compliance standards for money laundering and terror financing.

FATF all set to decide on Pakistan's grey list status

The APG's report came ahead of the virtual FATF plenary scheduled for October 21-23 during which it would be decided if Pakistan should be excluded from its grey list, based on a review of Islamabad's performance to meet global commitments and standards on the fight against money laundering and terror financing (ML&TF).

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FATF had placed Pakistan on its grey list in June 2018 and asked Islamabad to implement a plan of action to curb money laundering and terror financing by the end of 2019 but the deadline was extended later on due to COVID-19 pandemic.

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With Pakistan's continuation in the 'grey list', it is increasingly becoming difficult for the country to get financial aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the European Union, thus further enhancing problems for the nation which is in a precarious financial situation.

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If the FATF in its meeting finds that Pakistan has failed to meet its requirements, there is every possibility that the global body may put the country in the 'Black List' along with North Korea and Iran. In August, Prime Minister Imran Khan had warned that if blacklisted at the FATF, Pakistan's entire economy will be destroyed due to inflation and a massive fall in Pakistani Rupee.

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(With agency inputs)