Narrow escape

Last week the country narrowly escaped being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force as a money- laundering haven. This saved Filipinos, especially overseas workers and investors, from a lot of grief in banking and financial transactions arising from FATF sanctions. During its plenary meeting in Rome last week, the Paris-based task force assessed the Philippines’ efforts to plug loopholes in Republic Act 9160 or the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2001.

The Senate, finally done with the impeachment trial of former chief justice Renato Corona, managed to pass two of the measures amending AMLA. One, now RA 10167, lifts the silly requirement for the AntiMoney Laundering Council to first notify owners of suspicious bank accounts before their deposits can be scrutinized. This was akin to requiring law enforcers to notify drug traffickers of an impending raid on their drug laboratories. Another amending law, RA 10168, seeks to stop terrorist financing.

Still pending before Congress is a third measure, which seeks to expand the predicate crimes covered by AMLA to include terrorism and conspiracy to commit terrorism. Why this amendment required a separate bill and took years to reach possible enactment may be gleaned from the nature of some of the other crimes proposed for inclusion: bribery, malversation of public funds, tax evasion and fraud.

You’d think after Corona’s trial and a long string of large-scale corruption scandals in recent years, this measure would have been given priority by Congress. For some legislators, however, self-preservation is a powerful motivation to sit on a proposed law.

With two of the AMLA amending laws passed, lawmakers have vowed to approve the third measure. The promise, if fulfilled, would be welcome news. It won’t be long before the FATF again assesses the Philippines’ progress in fighting money laundering. Congress must commit to pass a law that is critical for good government. Malacañang noted that the FATF upgraded the Philippines from the dark-gray to gray list. That’s good, but still not good enough; it means the Philippines remains in the FATF pool of vulnerable or high-risk countries when it comes to money laundering.