Officials of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) and the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) told the committee chaired by Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman that they learned of the supposed practice through newspaper reports (not in The STAR).
AMLC executive director Vicente Aquino informed Lagman that his agency’s counterparts abroad had not monitored huge amounts of funds being deposited in banks or anything they considered suspicious that could be laundered money.
He said if jueteng lords accumulate and keep OFW remittances abroad, as at least one newspaper had reported, the deposits would build up over time and be monitored by anti-money laundering agencies. Nonetheless, Aquino said the AMLC was looking into the report.
However, he said the council will have to gather evidence to prove that the funds used to pay the OFW remittances here are proceeds from jueteng operations.
Both the AMLC and the Philippine Center for Transnational Crime (PCTC) said it was extremely difficult for jueteng lords to launder jueteng money through remittances of OFWs.
"The AMLC people said it is going to be extremely difficult and there is really no incentive for jueteng lords to do it. The jueteng lords need to be liquid all the time," PCTC Ambassador Florencio Fianza said.
For his part, BSP Assistant Governor Diwa Gunigundo said there is really no way to determine whether illegal gambling operators are laundering funds abroad using the OFW remittance system.
He said what the BSP knows is that OFWs remitted $8.55 billion last year through the banking system, and that an undetermined amount was sent through couriers, including relatives and friends who returned home and via door-to-door delivery system operators.
"There are about 4.7 million Filipino workers abroad receiving from $400 to $700 a month. Based on the requirement that they should send home 70 percent of their earnings, their remittances should amount to about $17 billion. But we don’t really know how much they are sending home," he said.
Not even OWWA Administrator Marianito Roque could provide the committee with a reliable guess as to how much OFWs are actually sending home to families here.
In fact, Roque questioned the data presented to the Lagman panel by disagreeing with Gunigundo that there are 4.7 million OFWs, adding to the confusion.
He said by his agency’s reckoning, there are only 2.7 million Filipino workers abroad.
Lagman urged the BSP to convince banks to bring down the charges they impose on remittances to encourage OFWs to send more money home through the banking system.
He said the report that jueteng lords were impounding OFWs’ remittances to "cleanse dirty funds," if true, would deprive the country’s economy of its lifeblood.
"We all know that it is the OFW remittances that are propping up the economy," he said. — With Cecille Suerte Felipe