We’re a bank laundry capital - DEMAND AND SUPPLY

Now I understand why international police organizations included us in a list of countries that are known havens for money laundering. The impeachment hearings tell us we should have the proper laws that will help clean up our banking industry and our national reputation.

Take that Jose Valhalla account. Apparently, there is no law that penalizes a bank officer for allowing anyone to open an account under a fictitious name. If you are an ordinary Juan dela Cruz, the bank will, on its own, most likely require you to produce some identification that prove you are who you say you are. You will probably also be asked to produce your tax account number.

But if you are a big shot client who wants to open an account under a fictitious name, there is no law to prevent the bank from accommodating your request. In the case of Jose Valhalla, given the large amount of money that apparently goes in and out of the account, a high level bank official will even take care of your account.

Take that Land Bank and Westmont accounts where very young people who don’t look like they can afford it, were allowed to open accounts and deposit/withdraw large sums of money (P40 million) with hardly any question on who they are. Ask the bank officers who handled the account openings and they probably would not be able to say who those people are.

While we do not expect bank officers to intimately know all their clients, the cardinal rule in banking is still, know your client. Anything unusual as in the case of the tobacco subsidy funds, should have been investigated a little bit more. The Land Bank, being a government bank, should be told to exercise special care in the handling of government funds.

The ability of criminal syndicates to open spurious accounts has made it possible for them to siphon, among other things, tax payments to the BIR and a number of cities and municipalities to their accounts. I imagine those in the illicit international drug trade find our lack of adequate banking laws hospitable for money laundering purposes. The conspiracies involving bank officers and government bureaucrats thrive because of this inadequacy in our banking law.

Right now, our country is considered a money laundering capital. This is a shameful national notoriety we should remedy without delay.

Point of no return

From one crisis, let us move on to another. Environmentalists say that the Philippines is facing an environmental crisis, which if it is not addressed, will reach a point of no return in five to 10 years. In a workshop conducted last week in Subic by Washington DC-based Conservation International, it was confirmed that the Philippines is now one of the world’s "hottest of the hotspots."

Hotspots refer to areas that have a high diversity of plants and animals that are native to it and are facing serious threats of species loss and habitat destruction. For starters, it was pointed out that 80 percent of the Philippine coral reefs have been damaged and 97 percent of our original rain forests have disappeared. It is obvious, experts say, that the ecosystem must be maintained.

The environmental experts have identified 151 priority sites for biodiversity conservation including 107 terrestrial, 19 inland water and 34 marine sites in the Philippines. The experts called for institutionalizing appropriate management approaches such as setting up biodiversity corridors. These corridors will link large interconnected networks of protected areas or will reconnect natural habitats by extending protection and promoting proper land use.

What I find shocking is the fact that only three percent of our natural forest cover is still intact. Come to think of it, we are already importing our wood requirements and I don’t mean those logs used in somebody’s log cabins in Tagaytay and Baguio.

Our main problem is countryside poverty which forces people to go into subsistence slash-and-burn methods of farming. At the end of the day, this ecological problem can be traced to extreme poverty. With the dire economic situation we face, things will simply get worse and we will probably just lose the little we have left of nature’s wonders.

Bouncing checks

I got a call from lawyer David Kho, who wrote the book Businessmen’s Guide on Bouncing Checks published by Central Professional Books. Atty. Kho said news reports that the Supreme Court has removed the penal provision on those convicted of violating the Bouncing Checks Law may erode public confidence on checks as a negotiable instrument.

Atty. Kho said imprisonment remains and anyone who fails to pay the fine is subject to subsidiary imprisonment at the rate of one day for each eight pesos in accordance with Article 39 of the Revised Penal Code. What was removed by the Supreme Court Administrative Circular No. 12-2000, Atty. Kho explained, is the discretion of judges to impose imprisonment as a penalty. The circular doubles the fine to be imposed to double the amount of the check but not to exceed P200,000.

Service of subsidiary imprisonment does not extinguish the obligation to pay the fine, Atty. Kho stressed. "The offender still has to pay the fine if his financial condition improves after his release. BOO CHANCO... From Page 27

Also, the full amount of the dishonored check has to be paid to satisfy the civil liability," Atty Kho concludes.

But what if the issuer of the check is a fictitious person, a Jose Valhalla, for example, who was allowed by the bank to open a secret account? Will the bank officer who allowed the opening of an account in the name of a fictitious person be held responsible instead?

Congress must remedy this obvious legal defect. It is an important one.

No cheater

Reader Chito Santos sent in today’s joke. Sounds like Erap trying to report to the nation.

A father was examining his son’s report card. "One thing is definitely in your favor," he announced. "With this report card, you couldn’t possibly be cheating."

(Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected])