PM Khan to meet senators over FATF-related bills today: sources

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan has summoned a meeting of the Senators hailing from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and other coalition parties to discuss legislation on Financial Action Task Force (FATF), ARY News reported, citing sources.

Well informed sources to the matter said that the senators will meet the PM at 4:30 pm today and the premier would listen to the issues being faced by lawmakers of the upper house of the parliament.

The prime minister would also issue directives to the Senators on legislation pertaining to FATF and other matters.

It is pertinent to mention here that the opposition parties had foiled a bid from the government to pass a bill relating to FATF, anti-money laundering (second amendment) bill 2020 from the Senate.

Earlier on August 28, Prime Minister Imran Khan had said that opposition parties were “blackmailing” his government over FATF bills despite being aware of the importance of the desired legislation and repeated his resolve not to give the opposition leaders any sort of “relief” in corruption cases.

In an exclusive interview with ARY News’ anchor Arshad Sharif, the PM had said that his government had inherited the FATF grey-list status and is trying hard to comply with the international body’s guidelines to bring Pakistan out of the list but “self-serving” opposition party leaders were trying to blackmail his government against supporting the bills “just to save their ill-gotten wealth”.