Pakistan not doing much to stop terror financing, says British researcher
Nov 09, 2019
Geneva (ANI) Nov 9, 2019: As Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has asked Pakistan to take stern action against fund flows to terrorists to be out of Grey List, a British researcher believes it can’t do much to stop terror financing. Recently speaking to ANI, Mathew Garrod, a lecturer at University of Sussex said that he cannot see any short term solution to this problem adding that there is least ability in Pakistan government to come out with a solution to this. The Paris-based inter-governmental body, FATF noted that Pakistan addressed only five out of the 27 tasks given to it in controlling funding to terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, responsible for a series of attacks in India. Garrod asserted that the problems of terror financing had been over looked from many years and it has been recently that the international community and the Security Council have woken up to address this issue. The researcher believes some of the terrorist groups and individuals have close alliances and links with the people in Pakistan and the army. It forces the law enforcement agencies to act against these groups. The mushrooming of terrorist groups at Pakistan-Afghanistan border poses security concern not only in South Asia but to the entire world. Pakistan’s presence in the grey list makes it difficult for the country to get financial aid from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Union, adversely impacting its economy. The Feb 2020 deadline set by FATF is critical and Pakistan will be blacklisted if it fails.
