EDITORIAL – Monitoring for what?

Provincial board member Arleigh Sitoy is proposing an ordinance that would monitor the operations of money-transfer companies. The monitoring is supposedly meant to help combat the proliferation of cyber sex activities in Cebu, particularly in his hometown of Cordova, where cyber sex activities first got exposed.

How the operations of money-transfer firms will be monitored is not clear. Sitoy is quite vague on the matter, saying only that his proposed ordinance is still being fine-tuned. Well, Sitoy had better hurry with his fine-tuning because money-transfer companies are getting jittery about what exactly he has in mind.

Any business, whether in money-remitting or making halo-halo, will always get jittery whenever the government announces any intention to monitor its activities. Government monitoring, especially for unclear reasons, can sometimes get in the way of efficiency, innovation and success.

More so with money-transfer companies whose line of business involves a lot of reliability and trust. Word gets out that it is being monitored by government, for whatever reason, and out the window can fly its business. And all because government cannot find better ways to solve its own problems.

It has to be conceded that money paid for cyber sex activities can pass through money-transfer companies. But what is the liability there of the money-transfer companies? Put another way, if these firms can be held liable for acting as conduits for an illegal activity, can banks not be held similarly liable?

On the other hand, how can money-transfer firms, and banks for that matter, avoid being used as such conduits - do they need the money sender to issue a certification that the money being sent is clean? Why, no certification can be easier to fake than that one.

The proposed ordinance tries to argue that the frequency of money-transfers, especially to a single recipient, can be an indicator of an illegal activity. That may be true, but it needs more than just frequency to nail a suspect. Tal Polano may receive three remittances a day, but you need more than that to pin him down.

The mere act of receiving three remittances may be highly suspicious, but unless the proposed Sitoy ordinance can connect the dots first, Tal Polano cannot be held liable simply because of that. Sitoy has to prove his guilt first, not the other way around.

More importantly, it is not the business of money-transfer companies to find out why Tal Polano gets three remittances per day. As far as they are concerned, he and his remitters are good business. And as far as they know, for as long as they are not into any illegal activities themselves, their business is legal.