Pakistan removed from EU’s list of high-risk countries

The European Union (EU) has removed Pakistan from its ‘list of high-risk third-countries’ that have strategic deficiencies in the Anti Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regime. Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari revealed this on Wednesday echoing a similar decision taken by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) months ago when it removed the country from its grey list after almost four years. “Pakistani businesses and individuals would no longer be subjected to Enhanced Customer Due Diligence by European legal and economic operators,” he tweeted. Nicaragua, Pakistan and Zimbabwe have remedied the strategic deficiencies in their respective AML/CFT regimes and no longer pose a significant AML/CFT threat to the international financial system. As a result, these three countries have been delisted from high-risk third country jurisdiction. The placement of Pakistan on the EU list on Oct 22, 2018 had created undue regulatory burden on “Obligated Entities” in EU and there were instances whereby some of them had refused to entertain legal and financial transactions with individuals and entities based in Pakistan.