FATF Plan meaning for Real Estate Market.

 

The Real Estate sector is an emerging sector in Pakistan which is growing at a fast pace and contributing a lot to the economy of Pakistan. With many new societies appearing regularly, the real estate business is growing vastly.

In the past, real estate management has been different to what it may be soon. With involvement of so many real estate agents and parties, it has been hard to keep a check and balance from the government’s side. Often the sector has been accused of financing terrorism, money laundering and other such activities.

In a recent and important development, the government of Pakistan will ask real estate agents to not only check but also share the credentials of people buying and selling property in Pakistan with the FBR.

To prevent terrorists from easily buying property in Pakistan as well as adhering to the conditions of FATF in accordance with the UNSC resolutions, it will soon be compulsory to share the information of all buyers.

On August 17th 2021, the National Coordination Committee met with the representatives of real estate agents and senior FBR officials to discuss the details further

To further help the real estate agents, the FBR will also provide an application with a list of 4500 suspected terrorists which is to be updated regularly. The list also contains terror financiers, money launderers and persons banned from organizations and was developed by the UN.

All real estate agents will have to cross check all buyers from the list and in case any name or CNIC matches any from the list, the authorities will be alerted by generating a Suspicious Transaction Report. Besides the cross checking, the real estate agents will have to maintain a record of all buyers and sellers of properties.

In addition, all buyers and sellers will also have to submit forms with information about the actual owner of the property. It is common to see third parties often selling or buying property on behalf of someone else, so this allows FBR to not only get the required information about the actual owner or seller but also to be able to trace the person with the money trail.