Launder threshold cut to P500,000

The Senate committee on banks headed by Sen. Ramon Magsaysay Jr. has approved in principle the lowering to P500,000 of the threshold amount in the Anti-Money Laundering Act that would trigger reporting of a bank account.

Sen. Francis Pangilinan, principal author of the amendatory bill, said a technical working group is finalizing the draft committee report that is meant to address concerns raised by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) regarding Republic Act 9160.

"We may hold one more hearing to discuss the proposal of the technical working group," Pangilinan said.

The FATF immediately rejected the law a few days after its signing on Sept. 29 last year supposedly to convince the FATF to remove the Philippines from its blacklist of non-cooperative countries and territories.

The FATF has considered the law’s threshold level of P5 million as too high, and pressed for its reduction to P500,000. It also refused to remove the Philippines from its blacklist of non-cooperative countries and territories.

The FATF also sought greater access to bank accounts by easing some provisions of the Bank Secrecy Law. This law requires a petition before the court before a questionable bank account could be looked into by authorities.

Pangilinan said that on the latter FATF concern, the Senate committee is inclined to resort to the law creating the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas instead of amending the Bank Secrecy Law.

"The Bangko Sentral Act authorizes the Monetary Board to inquire into bank accounts. This should be a faster remedy because this is administrative in nature and there is no need to go to the courts," he explained.

Pangilinan also said the committee has decided to ask the Anti-Money Laundering Council to explain how come Hungary, Lebanon, Israel and St. Kitts were removed from the FATF blacklist, unlike the Philippines.

Meanwhile, Sen. Tessie Aquino-Oreta blamed the Malacañang economic team for the persisting problem of the country with the FATF.

Oreta said it is now apparent that Malacañang’s economic team had failed to do its homework and that it tricked Congress in September 2001 into believing that even a hastily enacted law would remove the Philippines from the FATF blacklist.

Oreta recalled that she and the rest of the opposition supported the speedy passage of the law to prove that they were responsible and not obstructionist, and on the belief bolstered by the administration’s economic team that all that was needed to strike the Philippines out of the blacklist was to come out with the law.

‘This claim now turns out to be false, with certain government officials sheepishly saying that the law and its implementing rules and regulations are in dire need of some fine tuning," she lamented.

Some senators like Sen. John Osmeña have questioned the authority of FATF to confront a country like the Philippines. He said the biggest money-laundering countries are those with the FATF like Switzerland and the United States.

He added that there has been no proof that the Philippines is a haven for money launderers.