Ahead of a crucial review by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Pakistan has announced a reward for Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar, a designated global terrorist wanted in India for several major attacks. This move comes as Pakistan seeks to avoid being placed back on the FATF's grey list, having previously been on it due to deficiencies in counter-terrorism financing and anti-money laundering.

Ahead of a crucial review by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Pakistan has announced a reward for Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar, a designated global terrorist wanted in India for several major attacks. This move comes as Pakistan seeks to avoid being placed back on the FATF's grey list, having previously been on it due to deficiencies in counter-terrorism financing and anti-money laundering.

Ahead of a crucial review by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Pakistan has announced a reward for Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar, a designated global terrorist wanted in India for several major attacks. This move comes as Pakistan seeks to avoid being placed back on the FATF's grey list, having previously been on it due to deficiencies in counter-terrorism financing and anti-money laundering.

Even as the Paris-based global watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), is set to review Pakistan's anti-terrorism efforts at its upcoming plenary, Islamabad announced a reward of PKR 70 lakh for Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar.

Azhar, who was designated as a global terrorist by the UN Security Council in May 2019, remains wanted in India for major terror attacks, including the 2001 Parliament strike, the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the 2016 Pathankot airbase assault, and the 2019 Pulwama bombing.

Pakistan was placed on the FATF grey list between 2018 and 2022 for its systemic deficiencies in anti-money laundering and its failure to counter terror financing.

The major reasons included its failure to curb terror financing, particularly to Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba terror networks, besides weak implementation of financial sanctions on UN-designated persons, people tracking FATF's actions said, reported news agency PTI.

In order to exit the grey listing, Pakistan was forced to take a number of steps, including banning JeM and LeT and their fronts and convicting leaders of these outfits.

According to sources, in a bid to mislead the global community, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has categorised Azhar as a fugitive and raised his bounty by PKR 20 lakh.

"This ostensible crackdown comes ahead of the upcoming Financial Action Task Force plenary in October, as Pakistan seeks to avoid falling back onto the grey list. To evade action and deceive the international community, Pakistan began claiming in 2021 that Azhar was no longer on its soil but had fled to Afghanistan, while the FIA initially placed a PKR 50 lakh reward on him that same year. Five years later, the bounty was hiked to PKR 70 lakh," news agency ANI quoted sources as saying.

In 2022, Pakistan was allowed to exit from the grey list on the condition that the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) would continue to review its performance on its efforts regarding some specific points.

One of the points on which Pakistan continues to be under review by the APG, at the request of FATF, was its ongoing efforts to arrest Azhar.

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