Inept Anti-Money
Laundering Council
The crimes that have been attributed to Philippine offshore gaming
operators (Pogos), among them human trafficking, financial scams,
prostitution, and torture, now includes money laundering. The crime
involves transforming proceeds from illegal activities into funds that
ostensibly come from legitimate sources.
When government operatives raided last March the 10-hectare Pogo
complex in Bamban, Tarlac, they found 37 buildings consisting of a
shopping mall, condominiums, and other commercial
establishments. It was a Chinese community by itself, with signage
in Chinese characters, that was separate and distinct from the local
government unit.
In a TV interview, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian said some P6.1 billion
was spent to construct those buildings without any record of how
the money was brought into the country, and who constructed the
buildings. According to Gatchalian, officials of the Anti-Money
Laundering Council (AMLC) who were asked in an executive session
about that money inflow, could not say how the funds came in, who
received them, and who dispensed them during the construction
stage.
The crimes that have been attributed to Philippine offshore gaming
operators (Pogos), among them human trafficking, financial scams,
prostitution, and torture, now includes money laundering. The crime
involves transforming proceeds from illegal activities into funds that
ostensibly come from legitimate sources.
When government operatives raided last March the 10-hectare Pogo
complex in Bamban, Tarlac, they found 37 buildings consisting of a
shopping mall, condominiums, and other commercial
establishments. It was a Chinese community by itself, with signage
in Chinese characters, that was separate and distinct from the local
government unit.
In a TV interview, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian said some P6.1 billion
was spent to construct those buildings without any record of how
the money was brought into the country, and who constructed the
buildings. According to Gatchalian, officials of the Anti-Money
Laundering Council (AMLC) who were asked in an executive session
about that money inflow, could not say how the funds came in, who
received them, and who dispensed them during the construction
stage.
High-level membership
The government office tasked by law to monitor and prevent the
entry of “dirty money” into the Philippines unabashedly admitted
that it was clueless on the provenance and disposition of that huge
sum of money.
The AMLC is composed of the governor of the Bangko Sentral ng
Pilipinas (BSP) as chair, with the heads of the Securities and
Exchange Commission and the Insurance Commission as members.
It has its own budget allocation from Congress which is separate
from those of the offices they represent. With the BSP governor at
its helm, it also often receives generous financial assistance from
the cash-rich financial institution. The high-level membership is
meant to show that the government means business in combating
money laundering, which has been proven to be the source of
funding for heinous crimes in the country and other parts of the
world.
Not chicken feed
The law has given the council ample powers to monitor the
operations of all banks, financial intermediaries, and business
entities in the Philippines that engage in financial transactions to
make sure their facilities are not, wittingly or unwittingly, being used
as conduits for money laundering. It also has the powers to, among
others, freeze the bank deposits and other financial resources it has
reason to believe are about to be or are being used for unlawful
purposes.
So it boggles the imagination how P6.1 billion was able to enter the
country and be disbursed for building so many Pogo structures
without the AMLC being alerted to it or, at the minimum, getting a
whiff of it. That amount is not chicken feed or something that can be
nonchalantly ignored by government regulators.
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