Effects of flawed AMLA on OFWs

Our senators have succeeded in confusing the public about the Anti-Money Laundering Act. By raising a howl against Agile technical experts, they gave misimpressions about what the AMLA intends, to begin with.

One sore note is that the AMLA would enable the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to pry into bank deposits of at least $10,000, or P545,000 in present forex rates. That’s crazy. The AMLA would enable the authorities to monitor not deposits but suspicious transactions of $10,000 or higher. "Suspicious" means unusual exchanges of cash by drug lords, kidnappers and terrorists. Potentially, also grafters in government and jueteng lords, which is probably why senators want politicians exempted from AMLA coverage. Normal monthly payrolls, real estate or car purchases, or one-time personal loans are thus not affected.

The monitoring is by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), composed of the BSP governor, and heads of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Insurance Commission. The AMLC has frozen 15 bank accounts with unexplained transactions since the AMLA was passed in late 2001. At that time, the threshold amount was P4 million (roughly $80,000). The 30-country Financial Action Task Force based in Paris later requested Congress to bring it down to P500,000, along with lifting the exemption on politicians and the requirement of court orders to investigate suspicious accounts. The House of Representatives readily agreed. The Senate grudgingly cut the threshold to P550,000, but retained the self-serving exemptions and the need for court orders.

The senators also pooh-poohed FATF warnings that international banks would toughen up on transactions to and from the Philippines. Poor little overseas Filipino workers wouldn’t be touched, they thought. But as soon as Congress passed the inadequate AMLA amendments on Feb. 14, OFWs began to feel the pinch. International banks, under orders from their FATF-member governments, sternly scrutinized each transaction using new anti-laundering guidelines. The banks couldn’t care less if Juan dela Cruz was sending his monthly $100 from Singapore to the farming family in Tacurong, Cotabato. Under pain of penalty, they had to make sure the source of the $100 was not a crime boss laundering money in a country that doesn’t abide by new international rules.

As complaints from OFWs poured in from Europe and East Asia, the FATF gave Congress up to Mar. 15 to rewrite the amendments. Otherwise, it would take 7.5 million OFWs six to eight weeks to remit their earnings to Manila instead of the usual five to eight days, because of longer verification time. OFWs would also be charged $20-$40 fee per transaction, not just the usual $2-$4, to cover the costs of verification. Imagine a $100-remittance ending up only $60 because the senators refuse to see the light. The yearly $7-billion combined remittances of OFWs would be cut to $5 billion, with the remainder going to the banks.

Food importers and electronics exporters are now up in arms. The semiconductor industry anticipates 10-percent growth this year. But with the inadequate amendments, it expects to lose 12 percent to bank fees.

The 12 senators who resisted the amendments are: Angara, Arroyo, Biazon, Ejercito, Honasan, Lacson, Legarda, Oreta, J. Osmeña, Pimentel, Sotto, Villar. Sotto was so taken in by his own anti-Agile rantings that he confusedly mumbled, "We should not be misled into doing our jobs." Duh.

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It’s bishops like Ramon Arguelles, of the episcopal commission on migrant workers, that alienate the Catholic laity from the clergy. Shooting from the hip, Arguelles denounced as a "sellout" Speaker Jose de Venecia’s supposed deal with Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee-hwa to exempt existing OFW contracts from a new monthly tax of $51 (P2,800). Arguelles didn’t bother to query first that De Venecia, banking on friendship, rushed to meet Tung to intercede on behalf of 153,000 OFWs whose bosses would take out the levy from their wages. Tung promised to not retroact the tax on present OFWs. What’s wrong with that?

Arguelles might argue, what about future contracts? Well, there’s the possibility of dispatching better-trained OFWs who can command higher pay to offset the tax. And what about the tax effectivity if present contracts are renewed after April 2003? That’s precisely why the governments of five most-affected countries are taking the matter to the international court.

Labor officials are contemplating a stop to the sending of OFWs to Hong Kong. But then, bishops have been ranting against the very concept of having migrant workers. So what’s the beef?

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Have you been to Intramuros lately? You won’t believe how RP’s hottest salesman, Tourism Secretary Dick Gordon, cleaned up the Walled City and drove squatters out of historic structures.

Selected cobble-stone roads are closed to cars starting at 6 o’clock each night. Visitors can take walking tours into old buildings to learn more about the past. There’s the old church of San Ignacio de Loyola, completed by the Jesuits in 1632 but toppled by the big earthquake of 1852.

Thieves looted the crypts in the 1980s, but a draw well at the churchyard, dating back to the American Occupation, amazingly still works.

Two blocks away is what remains of the first site of the Philippine Military Academy. The structure was set up on President Aquinaldo’s decree in 1901 by Tomas Sanz, a Spanish Guardia Civil officer who had surrendered to the Katipunan. Nearby is the beaterio where Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo set up the Religious of the Virgin Mary, now the biggest congregation of nuns.

First-class restaurants offer eat-all-you-can dinners on well-lighted sidewalks for P130 per head. Smaller eateries offer kare-kare, adobo or inihaw na pusit with rice for P45. Strollers can walk up the wall ruins to watch the sunset while sipping good old San Miguel.

Fridays and Saturdays are music and stage nights, by electric and brass bands or conservatory chorales, followed by fireworks displays. Asked why he takes his family there every weekend, a business executive said, "It just makes me feel good."

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