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ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has sought at least two weeks time from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for public mobilisation and intelligence gathering to initiate on-ground action against banned outfits at the local level.

This is because the government fears backlash in case it clamps down on the outfits at district and local levels without mobilising local resources against them, an official privy to the recent talks with Asia Pacific Group (APG), a regional affiliate of the FATF - the global anti-money laundering watchdog - revealed.

A delegation of APG on money laundering concluded its three days visit to Pakistan on Thursday to assesss Pakistan’s efforts to choke terror financing, money laundering and action against banned outfits.

The official sources informed The Nation that APG was not satifised with the Pakistan’s implementation on the action plan shared with the FATF.

The APG inspectors expressed their serious reservations over Pakistan’s physical action against proscribed organisations at the local and grassroots level.

Though the group showed its satisfaction on Pakistan’s recent banning of two militant groups—Jamaatud Dawa and Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), yet it was not satisfied over the action recently intiated against actitivies of banned groups in far off areas.

In response, Pakistan has told the APG that it wanted some time to start a crackdown at local level for mobilisation of resoures at local levels including police, other law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies and district administration.

APG in its response has told Pakistani authorities that it had already sought time for such action in a meeting held in Sydney in January this year and was seeking time again. The next meeting will be held in Sri Lanka in mid of May. The second major reservation of the APG was the lack of coordination between different agencies of Pakistan tackling money laundering and terror financing.

According to official sources, FATF wants that Pakistan’s six institutions including Federal Board of Revenue, Financial Management Unit, Federal Investigation Agency, Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan and National Counter Terrorism Authority should be under one coordinating authority for better action against money laundering and terror financing.

A close aide of Prime Minister Imran Khan said that a coordinating body with the name of Assets Recovery Unit already exist for smooth and coordinated action against money laundering.

He said that four organisations including FIA, FBR, FMU and National Accountability Bureau worked in coordination under this unit.

He also informed that FATF had showed its satisfaction over the Recovery Unit with the remarks that proper information was being shared in it and resources were being mobilised to choke money laundering under it.

The National Security Committee under the chair of Prime Minister Imran Khan in its February 21 meeting had decided to accelerate action against proscribed organisations and ordered banning of JuD and FIF. The decision was takem as part of government’s efforts to get off its name from watchdog’s grey list.

In June 2018, Pakistan made a commitment with the FATF and APG to strengthen its anti-money laundering and counter terror financing regime and implement an action plan against activities of proscribed outfits.