Diokno urges AMLC to meet shortcomings on AML, CTF standards

FILE: Former Department of Budget and Management Secretary Benjamin Diokno is the new Governor of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. He succeeds the late Nestor A. Espenilla Jr. who died last February 23. (PNA photo by Oliver F. Marquez)

MANILA – Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin Diokno has urged the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) to ensure a positive end of the 12-month observation period for the Mutual Evaluation Report (MER).

In his speech during AMLC’s 18th-anniversary celebration on October 23, the BSP chief, who serves as the concurrent chair of the Council, said Mutual Evaluation measures a country’s level of technical compliance with international anti-money laundering (AML) or counter-terrorism financing (CTF) standards.

The ME also gauges the effectiveness of a jurisdiction’s existing AML and CTF.

Diokno said AMLC has done a self-evaluation of its AML and CFT based on the current legal framework, operations of competent authorities and statistics.

Results of the self-assessment showed that on effectiveness, AMLC achieved accurate ratings on seven of the 11 Immediate Outcomes (IOs) while it is technically compliant on 34 of the 40 Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations, he said.

The central bank chief said the country is “in the latter stage” of the ME and AMLC must submit a comprehensive progress report to the Asia Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering regarding its recommended actions.

“This 12-month observation period gives us an opportunity for the country to remedy identified shortcomings in the MER. As such, I enjoin everyone to work even harder to ensure that the Philippines is able to successfully exit thAMLe 12-month observation period,” he said.

“We cannot afford to have the Philippines in the Financial Action Task Force’s list of high risk and non-cooperative jurisdictions. Hence, we should be very strategic in our focus for the next 12 months. With perseverance, a reinforced Secretariat and a closer link with partner agencies, I am confident that we will be able to address the country’s weak AML/CFT areas,” he said.

Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is a policy-making body that sets standards and encourages the effective implementation of legal, regulatory, and operational measures against money laundering and terrorist financing.

It 2017, it removed the Philippines from its watch list after the signing into law of Republic Act (RA) No. 10927, which included casinos as among AMLC’s covered institutions.

Casino operators have been required to record the true identity of their patrons and to report to the Council transactions over USD100,000 or other currency equivalent to this amount within five working days for review.

Meanwhile, Diokno said AMLC “was able to produce tangible results” from its investigations from January 2018 to July 2019.

These investigations have resulted in the freezing of assets with an estimated amount of over PHP1 billion and caused the forfeiture of assets estimated to be around PHP600 million, he said.

“All these investigation efforts helped in the development of 11 money laundering complaints, two terrorism financing complaints, 23 applications for bank inquiry for money laundering, and three applications for bank inquiry for terrorism financing,” he added.