Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Saturday questioned the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) decision to continue to keep Pakistan on the watchdog’s “increased monitoring list”, also known as the grey list, despite implementation on 26 out of 27 points included in the original action plan.
In a statement, Qureshi said there was “no room” to keep Pakistan on the grey list after it had implemented nearly the entire action plan, according to a report by Radio Pakistan.
The foreign minister said it needed to be looked into whether FATF was “being used for political purposes”, adding “some powers desire to keep the sword of FATF hanging over Pakistan.”
It was yet to be determined whether the FATF was a technical forum or a political one, the statement quoted him as saying.
Qureshi said whatever steps Pakistan took were in its own interests, emphasizing that it was in Pakistan’s interest to stop money laundering and terror financing.
