ISLAMABAD: A US newspaper has alleged that Pakistan has removed thousands of names from its terrorist watchlist in what the country says is an effort to meet its obligations ahead of a new round of assessments by a global anti-money-laundering watchdog.

The proscribed persons list, which is maintained by Pakistan’s National Counter Terrorism Authority, or NACTA, is intended in part to help financial institutions avoid doing business with or processing transactions of suspected terrorists.

The newspaper claimed that the list, which in 2018 contained about 7,600 names, has been reduced to under 3,800 in the past 18 months. About 1,800 of the names have been removed since the beginning of March, according to data collected by Castellum.AI, a New York-based regulatory technology company.

No public explanation was given for the removals as they were made, but a Pakistani official said in an email interview that they are part of the country’s ongoing efforts to comply with a commitment to strengthen its counterterrorism safeguards.

The size and speed of the removals is unusual, according to Peter Piatetsky, a former senior policy adviser for the US Treasury and co-founder of Castellum.AI. “Removing close to 4,000 names without a public explanation is unheard of and it raises significant questions about the listing process,” he alleged.

The Pakistani official, Tahir Akbar Awan, a section officer with the Ministry of Interior, said the list had become “bloated with multiple inaccuracies” because it contained names of individuals who had died and those who may have committed crimes but weren’t associated with a designated terrorist group.

The Financial Action Task Force, an international organization that sets global standards and monitors countries’ anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism-financing policies, is scheduled to evaluate Pakistan’s progress in June, although measures intended to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus could delay the assessment.

A FATF spokesperson declined to comment on the removal of names from Pakistan’s terrorist watch list. In February, the group said Pakistan had largely addressed about half of the action items it had agreed to implement to prevent additional sanctions.

The organization is famously opaque, and doesn't publicly explain in detail the steps a country must take as part of an action plan, said Michael Kugelman, a deputy director at the Wilson Center, a Washington-based global policy research institution chartered by Congress in 1968.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the FATF has an expectation that Pakistan move forward on the prosecution of certain prominent terrorists, he said. In February, a Pakistani court convicted high-profile militant leader Hafiz Saeed on terrorist financing charges. Mr. Saeed’s name remains on Pakistan’s watch list.

Irfan Vaid, a sanctions and financial crimes compliance consultant who previously worked at the US Treasury as an adviser and attaché to Pakistan, welcomed the updates to the list but said Pakistan still had a way to go in making it fully effective.