Why a dishonest Pakistan remains in the Grey List for terror financing

New Delhi, Mar 05: Pakistan has once again been retained in the Grey List by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The country was told that it needed to do more in probing and prosecuting senior leaders and commanders of the UN designated terrorist groups for terror financing.

Pakistan has repeatedly failed to act against its proxies such as the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Pakistan also has failed to act against the many members of this outfit and has only made symbolic arrests of the chiefs of these groups when the heat is raised on it.

Several terrorists of both the above mentioned groups involved in attacks such as the one in Mumbai and Pulwama are walking around scot free. Operatives such as Sajid Mir who have played a crucial role in the Mumbai 26/11 attacks do not exist under Pakistan's radar. Islamabad in fact till date denies the existence of this person.

The FATF in a statement said the FATF encourages Pakistan to continue to make progress to address, as soon as possible, the one remaining item by continuing to demonstrate that investigations and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terrorist groups.

Pakistan should continue to work to address the one remaining item in its 2021 action plan by demonstrating a positive and sustained trend of pursuing complex investigations and prosecutions.

In 2020, Pakistan had sought to wriggle out of the Grey List and had imposed financial sanctions on 88 banned terror groups and their leaders, including 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar and underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.