Dirty money
IREMEMBER an American investment banker telling me once that major banks on Wall Street would gladly accept big black plastic bags full of cash regardless of where they came from and with scant attention to money laundering regulations. Well things may have tightened up a bit now but you do have to wonder what happens to the drug people’s cash— I’m sure they don’t keep it in old socks etc. under the mattress!
The exclusive Ayala Alabang subdivision was home for a short while to makers of shabu. It is claimed that the syndicate used three separate houses from which to operate their business. Subsequently some criticism has been leveled at the Barangay and by association at the house owners in the subdivision for being insufficiently concerned with the background of tenants, so long as they paid the year or two’s advance rental normally required and didn’t complain too much about the lease contract, everything was ok. If Ayala Alabang is not to besmirch its reputation, then indeed owners should pay more attention to the background of people who rent their houses. Besides anything else I don’t doubt that the shabu makers paid top dollar for their leases, as of course they could well afford to do!
It’s not so easy to rent a house in the UK, owners or their agents need bank references, character references and all sorts of comforts that will lead them to think it is less than likely that you will start a shabu lab inside their property.
It is a dangerous habit to judge people solely by the money that they have, but it is an ingrained habit particularly here in the Philippines where money is such a critically important commodity—things can go wrong like the shabu makers in Ayala Alabang, but what is worse is to not really care where the money came from, so long as it is enough. To stand outside the Makati ShangriLa and watch the people arriving and departing in their expensive cars with lots of designer shopping bags gives pause for thought as to how these people can afford such lifestyles. No doubt a lot of them have earned their right to shop at Gucci and drive Porsches totally legitimately, but for sure there will be some who have come by their cash in less legitimate ways. There was at one time a period during which government carried out lifestyle checks on senior bureaucrats, and newspapers would carry pictures of government car license plates being used possibly unofficially at weekends, but news of those initiatives seems to have died down now [in this time of clamping down on corruption].
Obtaining money by dishonest or unethical means doesn’t seem to bother people’s consciences too much these days, and not only in the Philippines, it’s a worldwide phenomenon. “I don’t care where the money came from, just give it to me ……” There is no doubt that lots of money was made by unethical means in the banking sector leading to the world’s current economic meltdown, and then spent at designer shops and for expensive cars and yachts and celebration lunches with bottles of wine at $2,000 a time, just throwing money away.
Which all begs the question as to does it really matter how money is made, so long as it is available to use in whatever transaction is desired? Does it matter if the money is from drug trading, or child prostitution, theft or corruption, slavery, forced labor or any of the other despicable practices that go on around the world? Sad to say it doesn’t really seem to matter too much and matters less as time goes by. It takes an exceptional moral strength by a person whose family may be starving to ask too many questions about the provenance of money that he is offered! And as for the others, those with enough already, perhaps they should not be so quick to just take the money unquestioningly.