UK removed Pakistan from ‘High Risk Third Countries’ list
ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari shared “some good news”, announcing that the United Kingdom has officially removed Pakistan from its ‘High-Risk Third Countries’ list.
The foreign minister highlighted that the decision was taken on Pakistan’s early completion of the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) action plan While sharing a picture of the official document on his Twitter handle.
“His Majesty’s Treasury issued an amendment to the UK’s High-Risk Third Countries’ list on November 14, 2022, through a Statuary Instrument. The amendment removes Pakistan from the list in accordance with the decision taken by the FATF on October 21, 2022,” the official document read.
“The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office recognized the progress Pakistan made to improve money laundering and terrorist financing controls,” it added. In April 2021, the UK government had included Pakistan to the list of 21 high-risk countries with unsatisfactory money laundering and terrorist financing controls.
This list of 21 countries — released by the UK government — replicated the list of countries named by the FATF as high-risk or under increased monitoring. Pakistan was at number 15 with conflict-ridden countries list such as Syria, Uganda, Yemen and Zimbabwe. According to the UK government, these nations pose a threat as having weak tax controls and a lack of checks and balances on terrorism-financing and money laundering.
However, the FATF, a global money-laundering and terrorism-financing watchdog, recently removed Pakistan from its grey list after four years in October. Raja Kumar the global body’s President had announced that Pakistan’s name has been removed from the “grey list” as the country addressed all 34 points of the action plan.
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