AMLC frozen funds down to P400-M

Funds frozen by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) have declined – from P1.083 billion to about P400 million in 2003 – as the government allowed the disbursement of the funds to their various claimants.

This developed as the AMLC revealed that it has formally applied for membership to the so-called Egmont Group as it prepares to enter into bilateral cooperation with its counterparts in South Korea and Australia.

According to AMLC, it has already completed the first stage of the application process and is now awaiting further instructions from the Egmont Group to determine if its membership would be further processed.

AMLC executive director Vicente S. Aquino told reporters yesterday that the council has been given full authority to enter into memorandum of understanding (MOUs) with its counterparts in other jurisdictions.

Aquino said the AMLC is pursuing various MOUs with other financial intelligence units while processing its Egmont membership to expand its network and access to information on international money-laundering.

"Forging MOUs with other FIUs will help our Egmont membership and conversely, our Egmont membership will help our effort to tie up with other FIUs," Aquino explained.

Aquino said the AMLC has officially submitted its reply to the questionnaire from the AMLC frozen Egmont Group in the initial stage of the AMLC’s application process.

"Now we are waiting to be advised on what the next step will be," he said. "The important thing is that we want to be viewed as a cooperative country."

The Egmont Group is a loose organization of FIUs that share information on international organizations that launder their illegally-gotten funds through the financial system.

Aquino explained that if the Philippines demonstrated enough that it was being cooperative, it could help along the process of being removed from black list of the Financial Action Task Force on Anti Money Laundering (FATF).

The latest performance report of the AMLC indicated that for the whole of 2003 and the first two weeks of January, the total amount of frozen funds amounted to P391.664 million in various banks and different denominations.

According to Aquino, the amount did not change much from its November figures covering funds from various illegal activities under the old provisions of the Anti Money Laundering Act.

As of January 15, 2004, AMLC said a total of P692.263 million had been ordered unfrozen, consisting of funds that came from pyramiding scams that were shut down by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

According to Aquino, a significant portion of the cases being investigated by the council involve violations of the Securities Regulations Act, mostly the illegal sale of unregistered securities by pyramid operators.

In the AMLC report covering the period between January 2003 and January 15, 2004, the council was pursuing 32 cases of civil forfeiture, money laundering and freeze orders involving a total of 39 cases of estafa, SRA violations, kidnapping, drug trafficking and even terrorism-related activities.