Addressing a press conference held shortly after Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar's briefing on Saturday announcing Pakistan's clearance from FATF's grey list, Hammad Azhar said, "It was clear that India was trying to use this platform for political purposes."
The FATF had announced on Friday during its concluding plenary session that Pakistan had been cleared for removal from the watchdog's increased monitoring list. The actual removal will happen once an on-site visit is conducted by the FATF.
"When came into power, there was a lot of fear that Pakistan would be blacklisted," said Azhar, adding that the PTI government formed an FATF Coordination Committee —aimed at working on the action plans provided by the watchdog, which included all the relevant state institutions.
"Officers of the committee worked day and night."
The former minister said that last year the PTI government had worked hard on implementing 32 out of 34 action plans, and a report on the remaining two was sent to the organization in April.
He said that Pakistan has done the 'best work' done by any country on the FATF action plans, saying that the PTI government had passed lots of FATF related laws and upgraded financial systems in different organs of the country.
"The real heroes are the officers who are sitting in different departments," Azhar said, adding that they 'performed continuously' for the past three and a half years.
He also said that India's role throughout Pakistan's time on the grey list had been very negative.
"This is a technical forum, not a political forum. An attempt was made to make it political," said Azhar.