EDITORIAL – A long way to go

Lawmakers are patting themselves on the back for the eleventh-hour approval of amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering Act or AMLA. In the coming days — especially with the absentee voting measure enacted into law — expect a lot of credit grabbing among legislators angling for the votes of millions of overseas Filipino workers in May 2004.

The OFWs and their families in the Philippines would have been among the hardest hit by the sanctions that were expected to be imposed on the country by the Financial Action Task Force or FATF if the amendments were not passed. Also expected to be hit were exporters and importers as well as foreign exchange enterprises.

A bicameral conference committee approved the amendments early yesterday after reaching a compromise on two major sticking points: the minimum amount that would require banks to alert monetary authorities about a possible case of money laundering, and the cases that would not require a court order to open a bank account. A threshold of P500,000 – the amount followed in most countries – was approved. Also, bank secrecy laws would be lifted even without a court order only if there is reason to believe that a bank deposit came from illegal activities such as terrorism, drug trafficking and kidnapping.

With the amendments, the government hopes to have the country taken out of the FATF’s blacklist of money laundering havens. And lawmakers have escaped the wrath of some five million OFWs and their relatives – numbering about 25 million – who would have suffered from FATF sanctions.

Because Congress rushed the work and approved the amendments only at the last minute, however, the revised law is sure to have infirmities. Among the biggest launderers of illegal money in this country are politicians. Fruits of corruption are easily stashed away in the Philippine banking system. During elections, no one can keep track of funds contributed by smugglers, drug traffickers, kidnappers and even terrorist groups to the campaign kitties of certain candidates. Opening the bank accounts of most of these politicians will require a court order. Considering the pace of the judicial system, by the time such a court order is issued, the money launderer would have closed the account and covered his tracks.

OFWs and the public welcome the passage of the amendments to the AMLA. But the nation has a long way to go in the battle against money laundering.