Pakistan’s Minister of State for Finance and Taxation said cryptocurrencies cannot be legalized in the country due to conditions set by a global money laundering watchdog, which demanded that they be excluded from a list of countries with heightened surveillance.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said it “does not require countries to indiscriminately ban virtual assets and virtual asset service providers”.
The FATF said it requires countries to understand the money laundering and terrorism financing risks faced by the crypto industry, and to issue licenses or register exchanges to regulate the industry in the same way as other financial institutions.
The FATF requires virtual asset service providers to implement the same precautions as financial institutions, including customer due diligence, record keeping and suspicious transaction reporting, and to comply with its travel rule.
The rule requires crypto service providers to collect and share transaction information above a certain threshold. It was previously reported that Pakistan has no plans to legalize cryptocurrency trading.