In a major revelation, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on Thursday cautioned that India faced “disparate” range of terror threats, most significantly from the Islamic State or Al-Qaeda-linked groups active in and around Jammu and Kashmir.
The observation was made in a ‘mutual evaluation report’ released by FATF on combating terror financing and anti-money laundering regime. While stating that the county’s systems were “effective”, it called for “major improvements” to strengthen prosecution in these cases.
In the 368-page report, the global terrorist financing watchdog said India has implemented anti-money laundering and combating terror financing system that is effective in many respects. It, however, noted that major improvements were needed to strengthen prosecution in money-laundering and terror financing cases.
The global body also added that improvements were required to protect non-profit sector from terror abuse. “India’s main sources of money laundering originate from within, from illegal activities committed within country,” the FATF report said.
The FATF’s fourth round of mutual evaluation for India happened in November 2023. The FATF plenary held in Singapore between June 26-28 this year had adopoted the mutual evaluation report for India, stating that it had achieved “high level of technical compliance” with the requirements of the global money laundering watchdog.
The FATF had placed India in the “regular follow-up” category – the highest rating given by the global watchdog and a distinction shared by only four other G20 countries including the UK, France and Italy.
