New Delhi, Sept 14 (NVI) Playing its old gimmick once again, Pakistan has announced that Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorist outfit chief Masood Azhar, an accomplice and protectee of its own intelligence agency ISI, is a wanted man in that country and declared an enhanced reward of 70 lakh Pakistani Rupees for information leading to him.
The gimmick comes ahead of the October meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global watchdog of terror financing where Pakistan’s complicity with outfits like JeM is expected to come up for scrutiny.
It also comes days after Pakistan claimed that Azhar was in Afghanistan, whose rulers Taliban rejected the claim.
According to the technical analysis by the Indian intelligence agencies over the last six months, Azhar is stationed in Nawabshah city within Pakistan’s Sindh province.
He was shifted there by ISI after India carried out a massive air attack on JeM’s headquarters in Bahawalpur in May last year.
FATF is an intergovernmental organisation that serves as the principal global watchdog against money laundering and terrorist financing and it came into existence in 1989.
It currently has 40 members including India, China, Gulf Cooperation Council, European Commission and others.
Pakistan was earlier put on the ‘Grey List’ of the FATF, which involves close monitoring, for several years because of its government’s linkages with terror financiing and money laundering.
If blacklisted, a country is denied finances by the international institutions like World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Pakistan is heavily depending on loans from these institutions as it is facing acute financial crisis. (NVI)
