ISLAMABAD: To ensure the implementation of the recommendations by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has been actively investigating suspicious transactions.
The board will keep a close watch on the real estate sector, jewellers, and money changers. The FBR has issued a total of about 50,000 notices this financial year.
22,000 notices were issued to property dealers on suspicious transactions, sources said, adding that the notices pertained to investments under suspicious transactions, FBR sources said.
Based on the notices, real estate, jewellers, money changers will be investigated.
Pakistan has taken steps to curb terror financing and money laundering and the government is hopeful of exiting the grey list of the financial watchdog.
Pakistan has completed implementation on 26 out of 27 points of action given by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to get off the grey list.
In June 2018, the global watchdog had placed Pakistan on its grey list over Islamabad’s failure to curb money laundering and terror financing. Since then, Pakistan has been struggling to get out of the list by working on the FATF action plan.
Ahead of the plenary moot, the Pakistan-specific body of the FATF – International Cooperation and Review Group (ICRG) – will hold a virtual meeting today to assess Pakistan’s progress on the action plan. This ICRG subgroup comprises China, the US, the UK, France, Germany, New Zealand, and India — most of these states are sceptic about Pakistan’s efforts.
Earlier, Asia Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering published results of Pakistan’s second Mutual Evaluation follow-up Report on 2 June 2021. As per the report, Pakistan has achieved a compliant/largely compliant rating in 31 out of 40 FATF Recommendations in Technical Compliance.
