New Delhi

As expected due to slow and reluctant changes made by Pakistan in reforming its legal and financial system to deny terrorists’ avenue to fund their activities and criminals to launder their ill-gotten monies for offshore transfer, the country remains on the grey list of the global watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

"Pakistan government has two concurrent action plans, with a total of 34 action plan items. It has now largely addressed 30 of the items," said FATF president Marcus Pleyer at the conclusion of the plenary held in Paris.

Pakistan will remain in the increased monitoring 'Grey List' of global terror financing watchdog FATF, said its president on Thursday.

Interestingly, Pakistan’s close ally Turkey has also been included in the grey list of 23 countries that are being monitored by the FATF.

Turkey has been asked to take serious monitoring in its banking sector and real estate with the gold and precious stone dealers.

This move is likely to have a major impact on the economy of the country that is already facing the flight of industry and investment due to the eccentric policies of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“Turkey needs to show it is effectively tackling complex money laundering cases issues and show it is pursuing terrorist financing prosecutions…and prioritizing the case of UN-designated terrorist organisations such as the ISIL and Al Qaeda,” Pelyer said.

Pakistan has been battling this stigma by being on the Paris-based FATF's grey list for deficiencies in its counter-terror finance and anti-money laundering regimes since June 2018.

Pleyer noted that "Pakistan has made significant progress and it has largely addressed 26 out of 27 items on the action plan it first committed to in June 2018."

He, however, had added that the item on financial terrorism still needed to be addressed which concerned the "investigation and prosecution of senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terror groups".

In June this year, Pakistan was given three months to fulfil the remaining conditions by October.

Pakistan was retained on the FATF 'grey list' since 2018 for failing to effectively implement the global FATF standards and over its lack of progress on investigation and prosecution of senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terror groups.