The Asia Pacific Group (APG) team of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international organization that monitors money laundering and terrorist activities, has returned from Nepal after completing on-site meetings and discussions. The team returned with suggestions on the expected improvements in the action plan implemented by Nepal to exit the 'Grey List', including the investigation and prosecution of financial crimes, and the readiness to bring assets generated from financial crimes into government ownership in cases that have already been decided. 

A two-member team, including APG Deputy Executive Secretary and Head of Delegation David Shannon, arrived in Nepal last Sunday. The team met with Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle, Nepal Rastra Bank Governor Bishwonath Poudel, Chief Commissioner of the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority Prem Kumar Rai, and other high-ranking officials of various agencies, police chiefs, and various stakeholders for three days on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, to review the areas they are working on and suggest ways to increase effectiveness in areas where work has not been done. 

While in Nepal, the team suggested increasing the effectiveness of the work being done by Nepal in the area of ​​money laundering, said Pushkar Sapkota, coordinator of the Anti-Money Laundering Coordination Committee and legal secretary of the Prime Minister's Office. 'It was FATF that put Nepal on the grey list. Nepal has prepared an action plan as per its instructions to get out of the list and implemented it,' he said, 'The APG team has asked all stakeholders in Nepal to make the implementation of the action plan effective by meeting and discussing it on the spot.' 

Coordinator Sapkota said that the team suggested increasing the intensity of work in those areas if it could not be implemented effectively in any point. 'The team did not formally raise the issue of Nepal being blacklisted or not. It said that Nepal is on the right track, the pace of work seems to be a bit slow, now it should be accelerated,' he said.

According to conversations with various officials involved in the meeting, Kantipur warned that there has not been much progress in the points mentioned in the action plan to get out of the 'grey list' and suggested improving it. A joint secretary who attended the meeting told Kantipur that they were dissatisfied with the failure to properly report on progress made in the areas of banking and financial sector, regulation of cooperatives, banking offences, real estate transactions, precious metals transactions, corruption, tax evasion, human trafficking and smuggling, environmental and wildlife crimes, and money laundering through the establishment of companies, according to sources.