The United Kingdom has removed Pakistan from its ‘high-risk third countries’ list.
This means the UK foreign office recognizes the progress Pakistan has made to be removed from FATF’s grey list.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, announced the development on Twitter, sharing a photo of a document on his Twitter account.
The document says UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office “recognizes the progress Pakistan has made to improve money laundering and terrorist financing controls.” It also says that the UK’s decision is consistent with the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) recent decision on October 21 to remove Pakistan from the FATF’s “grey list”.
According to the UK’s law, countries on this list are included in either FATF’s lists with significant shortcomings in their anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing and counter-proliferation financing controls.
The UK government added Pakistan to its list in April 2021. Pakistan ranked 15 on the UK’s list of 21 “high-risk third countries,” which included Syria, Uganda, Yemen, Zimbabwe and Iran.
