Austrac to sponsor RP as member of Egmont Group

The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (Austrac) will sponsor the country’s bid to become a member of the Egmont Group, the international group of financial intelligence agencies.

If successful, the bid for Egmont membership will help the Philippine lobby for its removal from the blacklist of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force on Anti-Money Laundering.

The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) revealed over the weekend that Austrac has just concluded a visit to the Philippines to evaluate the progress of the country’s anti-money laundering effort.

AMLC executive director Vicente Aquino told reporters that Austrac examined AMLC facilities and appeared satisfied that the council was ready to become a member of the Egmont Group.

"They are going to sponsor us for Egmont membership," Aquino said. "They are also willing to help us with the FATF."

According to Aquino, Austrac officials visited and evaluated AMLC’s information technology center which handles the database for all financial transactions covered by the Anti-Money Laundering Law.

Aquino said that with P100 million already released by the National Government, the AMLC was able to purchase the hardware needed to set up the IT center.

"We used the e-procurement facility of the Department of Budget and Management so everything was transparent and really handled by the department instead of us directly," Aquino said.

Aquino expressed confidence that AMLC’s ITC complied with the requirements of the Egmont Group. "I think we will meet Egmont standards," he said.

Aside from Austrac, representatives of the US and Canadian financial intelligence units have also evaluated the AMLC in preparation for the country’s membership application to the Egmont Group.

The council has been in close coordination with the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (Fincen) and the Financial Transaction Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (Fintrac) to discuss the progress in the implementation of the program.

Under the Egmont Group’s application procedures, an applicant country requires at least one sponsor. Fincen was originally eyed as the primary sponsor, but Fintrac later volunteered to also support the Philippine application.

The Philippines formally applied for membership early this year as it also prepared to enter into bilateral cooperation with AMLC counterparts in South Korea and Australia.

The AMLC initially submitted its reply to the questionnaire from the Egmont Group in the initial stage of the AMLC’s application process.

If Fincen and Fintrac are both satisfied with the implementation of the Anti-Money Laundering Program, their sponsorship would bolster the country’s Egmont application and also help the protracted effort to be removed from the FATF list of non-cooperative countries and territories (NCCTs).

The Asia Pacific Group for Anti-Money Laundering (APG) has already endorsed the Philippines‚ anti-money laundering implementation plan as a model for other Asian countries, but the plan has not been fully evaluated by the FATF’s Asia-Pacific Review Group.