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.