THE Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) has frozen P647 million worth of assets year-to-date, higher than 2019’s total, AMLC Executive Director Mel Georgi B. Racela said on Thursday.

“We were able to file petitions for issuance of freeze order, application for bank inquiry and petitions for civil forfeitures. As a result, total amount frozen is P647 million for the frozen assets. In 2019, the total is approximately P138 million,” Mr. Racela said in a Senate hearing yesterday.

He said the AMLC had 14 petitions for issuance of freeze orders from January to mid-September.

Meanwhile, Mr. Racela said the Department of Budget and Management approved P85.15 million for the agency’s spending plan in the upcoming year, lower by 34.98% from the P130.966 million they have for 2020.

Broken down, the DBM’s approved budget for AMLC includes P68.26 million for maintenance and other operating expenses while P16.89 million is allotted for capital outlays.

The approved budget was also lower by 37.54% compared to AMLC’s proposed P226.837=million budget for fiscal year 2021.

During the hearing, Mr. Racela said they initially programmed P6.05 million for consultancy services, of which only P2.2 million was approved.

“We hired an international expert for this to help us with our mutual evaluation. But they only approved P2.2 million,” he said.

The Philippines is under an observation period until February 2021, extended from the October initial deadline. During this time, the country is expected to address the gaps in its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing rules.

Failure to pass the review will mean the country is under the risk to be included in the gray list of countries that are deemed to be lax on dirty money standards.

Mr. Racela said they also wanted to buy software to safeguard their databases and requested appropriations worth P6.7 million for this but the DBM did not approve the programmed budget.

He added they were eyeing to use their 2021 program for enhancements in dealing with artificial intelligence.

“We intend to delve into artificial intelligence in 2021 because what we currently do is manual analysis of suspicious transaction reports and this takes a lot of time.”

The AMLC proposed a budget worth P71.5 million for its smart money laundering/terrorist financing detection project. However, only P305,000 was approved. — L.W.T. Noble

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