THE Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) said it has frozen over P1 billion worth of assets and seized a further P600 million between January 2018 and July 2019, in the course of investigations into money laundering and terrorist financing.
AMLC Chairman and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Benjamin E. Diokno said the assets were discovered during the regulator’s own investigation efforts and cases brought to it by other law enforcement agencies.
Mr. Diokno was delivering a keynote message at the 18th AMLC Anniversary at the BSP on Oct. 23.
“All these investigation efforts helped in the development of 11 money laundering complaints, two terrorism financing complaints, 23 applications for bank inquiry for money laundering, and three applications for bank inquiry for terrorism financing,” Mr. Diokno said.
In 2018 the amended Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) were implemented, he noted. Under the new rules, covered persons will be held accountable for their violations of the AMLA and will be subject to “robust anti-money laundering and terrorism financial prevention programs.”
The IRR amendments include requiring casinos to report transactions bigger than P5 million within five working days which will also oblige gamblers to report bets beyond P5 million.
The AMLC has also rolled out guidelines for identifying beneficial ownership to promote transparency in the use of legal persons, legal arrangements, and nominee arrangements. Casino owners are now subject to compliance checks and investigation should they be implicated in money laundering or terrorism financing.
“This is to ensure that these types of arrangements will be legitimately used and not for the purpose of distancing one’s identity from the proceeds of crime,” Mr. Diokno said.
The AMLC is also currently gauging its level of technical compliance with international standards as well as the effectiveness of its current system related to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing.
“The Philippines is in the latter stage of the Mutual Evaluation (ME)… Prior to the ME Report, (MER) the AMLC conducted a self-assessment based on the existing legal framework, operations of competent authorities, and statistics to forecast the evaluation results,” Mr. Diokno said, noting that the assessment revealed accurate ratings for seven out of the 11 Immediate Outcomes (IOs) and 34 out of 40 Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations related to technical compliance.
Aside from the MER, Mr. Diokno said that the Philippines also entered a one-year observation period which requires the country to submit a comprehensive progress report to the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) focused on the implementation of its recommended actions by the end of the observation period.
“This 12-month observation period gives us an opportunity for the country to remedy identified shortcomings in the MER. We cannot afford to have the Philippines in the Financial Action Task Force’s list of high-risk and non-cooperative jurisdictions. Hence, we should be very strategic in our focus for the next 12 months,” Mr. Diokno said. — Luz Wendy T. Noble
