RP approves key money laundering amendments
RP approves key money laundering amendments
Agence France-Presse, Manila
Philippine legislators have approved changes to strengthen an
anti-money laundering law in a last minute move to escape
threatened sanctions from western nations, officials said
Thursday.
In a final push, a joint congressional committee reconciled
the versions of the law amended by the House of Representatives
and the Senate just before midnight Wednesday to beat a deadline
set by the Paris-based, anti-money laundering Financial Action
Task Force (FATF) of developed nations.
The task force had given the Philippines up to this week to
make key changes to the country's existing law, passed in 2001,
which it felt was fairly toothless.
If it failed to make the amendments, the cash-strapped
Philippines faced sanctions that would have delayed financial
transactions, most crucially the remittances from seven million
Filipinos working overseas.
The existing law says a special anti-money laundering task
force can only investigate bank transactions of at least four
million pesos (US$74,130) and must get a court order to open
suspect bank accounts.
The new amendments would lower the threshold on suspect
transactions to 500,000 pesos (about $9,400), an official said
after the approval of the amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering
Act following extensive debate.
There would also be a conditional lifting of bank secrecy laws
to investigate three types of crimes -- hijacking, kidnapping and
drug related offenses, the official said, without elaborating.
President Gloria Arroyo is expected to sign the Anti-Money
Laundering Amendment bill into law by the end of the week,
possibly on Thursday.
Aside from the Philippines, the FATF list of so-called non-
cooperative countries includes the Cook Islands, Egypt, Grenada,
Guatemala, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nauru, Nigeria, St. Vincent and
the Grenadines and Ukraine.
The task force said it would review the list again at its
plenary meeting in Paris this week.
The 13-year-old FATF was formed to combat tax evasion and
drug-related money laundering schemes.