Money launder law author sees revision

Republic Act 9160, the Anti-Money Laundering Law, should be revised to comply with the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), one of the law’s principal authors said yesterday.

House economic affairs committee chairman Rep. Oscar Moreno (Lakas, Misamis Oriental) made the proposal as President Arroyo said she remains hopeful the FATF would not impose sanctions against the Philippines over deficiencies in the law.

Moreno, for his part, said the "above P4-million" threshold amount that would prompt banks and other covered institutions to report suspicious transactions "is unusually high."

"In the United States, transactions of $10,000 and above are being monitored and reported. Here, the threshold is four times the US level. It means that we are four times more lenient," he said.

Moreno and Manila Rep. Mario Crespo, better known as Mark Jimenez or MJ, who is anti-money laundering subcommittee chairman, had batted for the P500,000 (about $10,000) as the threshold during the debates on the bill that became RA 9160.

The Misamis lawmaker recalled that there was a "strong resistance from the House" against their suggested amount.

He said his colleagues eventually opted for a P5 million threshold that became P4 million during the bicameral conference on the anti-money laundering measure.

The Paris-based FATF, a financial watchdog group of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), asked local financial officials last week to improve certain provisions of the law that could be used as loopholes by criminals and terrorists.

Finance Secretary Jose Isidro Camacho and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Rafael Buenaventura were also asked to respond to criticisms of the law before the FATF plenary meeting in Hong Kong next month.

The President, in her yearend economic report, said: "What I understand is that they have criticisms...

"But the way I understand it, it’s not so bad that they would stop transactions (with Philippine banks)."

She said the FATF may just be airing an "opinion" on the law, which she signed on Sept. 29, a day before the FATF deadline.

This did not specifically mean the grouping’s members would apply economic sanctions on Manila, which could include ignoring transactions of millions of overseas Filipino workers.

Mrs. Arroyo said she has asked her economic managers for a detailed analysis of the FATF comment.

The FATF had earlier threatened to impose economic sanctions on Manila unless it outlawed trafficking of dirty money.

The Philippines has been trying to get out of a FATF blacklist of countries seen as not doing enough to combat money laundering by criminal syndicates and terrorist organizations.

The FATF has said it wanted several improvements in the anti-money laundering law, such as lowering the P4 million (about $77,000) minimum it covered.