The crucial meeting of Financial Action Task Force's subgroup Asia Pacific Group's meet began in Bangkok on Monday to review progress made by Pakistan after the June meeting.

This comes on the back of the reports that terrorist Masood Azhar, chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed which killed 40 CRPF jawans in an attack in February this year in Pulwama, was never even put in jail. 

Earlier, some reports had claimed that Masood Azhar has been released from a Pakistani jail and is currently planning to launch a massive attack on India but Indian intelligence sources have told Zee Media that the JeM chief was never in jail. 

While Pakistan is being represented by Federal Minister for Economic Affairs, Hammad Azhar, the head of India's Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) is representing New Delhi. The Pak team comprises of representatives of State Bank of Pakistan, Directors of SECP and counterterrorism authority.

At the FATF meeting, Pak would have to answer 125 questions regarding money laundering and terror financing. They will also have present a detailed report on the steps taken to prevent these offences. The report would detail steps taken to prevent money laundering and illegal investment in national saving schemes.

Pakistan will have to reveal how they are tackling all these issues. Pakistan will also present the new report on National Risk Assessment.

Focus on the September 9-13 meet will be on reviewing the progress made by Islamabad on its June 2018 commitment when it agreed on 27 points action point. At the end of the Bangkok meet on September 13, the global watchdog will decide whether Pakistan’s name stays on the grey list or if it would be added to the blacklist.

After being greylisted in June 2018, Pakistan had made high-level political commitments to address its counter-terrorist financing-related deficiencies which basically means to act on the financing of terrorist activities. 18 of the 27 action points are yet to be implemented by Islamabad.

On 40 compliance parameters, Pakistan failed on 32 counts and its actions will be observed for one year now.

(With inputs from Sidhant Sibal)