Contradictory to its profess of acting under no influence, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is revealed to be toeing a “politicised” approach, especially targeting the Muslim States, data exposed.
On Thursday the terror financing watchdog decided to keep Pakistan on the grey list and demanded the country to downright contemporaneous action plans even though Pakistan had already assembled 30 of 34 recommended objectives.
FATF President Dr Marcus player stated to the media that “Overall Pakistan is doing good on this new action plan”. Moreover, he said that four out of seven objectives are so far addressed.
According to Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI), Pakistan is among few countries which had the lowest ratio of non-compliance of FATF action plan, the country continues to remain on the grey list despite losing the lives of around 80,000 soldiers and suffering the economic loss of $150 billion after becoming part of the US-initiated war against terrorism.
The FATF turned a blind eye over France despite having a non-compliance ratio of 25%. Similarly, many other countries have a non-compliance ratio of 22.5%, Japan 27.5%, New Zealand 30%, Georgia 32.5%, South Korea 20% and Russia 12.5% are out of the grey list.
Pakistan has been noticing for a long time that the watchdog is a puppet that is being used as a political tool to dish up the interests of some countries, and the recent enlistment of Turkey in the grey list has proved the claim.
The solidified stance of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, especially highlighting the Muslim world issues like Kashmir and Palestine issue and particularly Islamophobia has intimidated the Western powers.
Similarly, PM Imran Khan also strongly condemned the issue of Islamophobia across the Western world, including the General Assembly. Moreover, he exposed the human rights violations of so-called democratic India in illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
The integrity of the watchdog was questioned when India’s External Affairs Minister Jaishankar admitted to influencing FATF for retaining Pakistan in the grey list.
All this provides a possibility that FATF is working under the sphere of influence to please a few countries and the hypocritical nature of the watchdog ignoring the lack of some countries and accomplishments of countries like Pakistan and Turkey has proven that it is used as a political tool by powerful nations.
Author: Amna Sheraz