AMLA amendments face fine-tuning

The newly amended anti-money laundering law will be fine-tuned further so the Philippines will be removed from a blacklist of countries considered havens for dirty money, Malacañang said yesterday.

"For us to be removed from the watchlist, we will probably come up with further amendments of the (law). We will probably go to further refinement but the important thing is that March 15 deadline is already out," Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye told a radio interview yesterday.

"What’s important is that there will be no more threat of sanctions," he added.

President Arroyo signed the amendments into law last Friday so the Philippines can avoid sanctions that could hurt the dollar remittances of seven million Filipino overseas workers.

Congress ratified the amendments on Wednesday.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) had given the Philippines until March 15 to amend the law or face sanctions from industrialized nations such as the United States, Japan and European Union countries.

It said the 2001 anti-launder law and amendments to it made in February were insufficient to stop the flow of illegal funds.

The Paris-based global money laundering watchdog blacklists countries it judges are not doing enough to block the flow of dirty money around the world. Such a move hurts the flow of investments and funds into a country on the FATF watchlist.

Praising the amendments to the law, the White House said on Saturday the changes would be "an important tool" in the war on terrorism.

"In a world in which terrorism and criminality are so closely linked, strong anti-money laundering regimes are more important now than ever before," spokesman Ari Fleischer said in a statement.

"We congratulate President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the leadership of the Philippine legislature on this advance in the government’s program to reform the economy, fight against crime and corruption, and stamp out terrorism."

Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., however, earlier said more amendments would be needed if the Philippines were to be stricken off the blacklist.

The amendments signed by Mrs. Arroyo allow the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) to access account information without the need for a court order.

The threshold for bank transactions to be investigated was also lowered from the present P4 million to about P500,000.

Criminal investigations will still need prior court permission to gain access to suspect bank accounts, unless it involved cases of kidnapping for ransom, drug trafficking or terrorism.

The FATF is made up of 31 industrialized nations, including the United States, European Union countries and Japan.

Aside from combating terrorism, the law can also be used against fighting crime and Ponzi scams or pyramid schemes, Rep. Juan Miguel Zubiri said.

Zubiri said the law "can be debuted against local pyramiding operations."

"It’s a good battering ram to demolish the pyramids, punish the perpetrators and protect the investors," he said in a statement.

He had introduced a resolution at the House of Representatives seeking a probe on such scams in the country, following the arrest of a woman last week for conning hundreds of police officers, military personnel and their families into putting money into an investment scam.