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Reaction On AMLA PDF

1) In 2009, the Philippine Congress passed the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) to curb money laundering and protect the integrity of the country's monetary system. 2) Prior to AMLA, the Philippine banking system had high levels of secrecy that made it easy for criminal groups to launder ill-gotten wealth. 3) AMLA established new regulations for banks and financial institutions based on World Bank frameworks to increase transparency and prevent the laundering of funds from illegal activities like terrorism, kidnapping, and tax evasion.

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Nathaniel Remendado
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114 views2 pages

Reaction On AMLA PDF

1) In 2009, the Philippine Congress passed the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) to curb money laundering and protect the integrity of the country's monetary system. 2) Prior to AMLA, the Philippine banking system had high levels of secrecy that made it easy for criminal groups to launder ill-gotten wealth. 3) AMLA established new regulations for banks and financial institutions based on World Bank frameworks to increase transparency and prevent the laundering of funds from illegal activities like terrorism, kidnapping, and tax evasion.

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Nathaniel Remendado
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NAME : NATHANIEL O.

REMENDADO
BLOCK : BSED-II Social Studies
PROFESSOR : Prof. Lyra Ruth P. Nasayao
SUBJECT : Macroeconomics
TERM : Second Semester

“Governing Anti-Money Laundering”:


Facing New Realities in the Protection of the Nation’s Purse

In 2009, the Congress of the Philippines assembled have created a law, a landmark
piece of penal legislation created purposefully to arrest one of the most apparent scourges
that threaten the integrity of the monetary policy of the nation. Faced with new onslaughts
of time and ever changing plagues of criminality, the Congress of the Republic Passed
Republic Act no. 9160, or the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2009. This landmark
legislation also, in its own right, created from its own shell a Central Bank with law
enforcement capabilities and financial intelligence jurisdiction, the first in its kind in the
world. It has been ten years since the legislation’s initial roll out, and new cases and new
prosecution has made it possible for the development of new reforms in the banking
structure of the Philippines.

In context, banking in the Philippines is a necessary institution of credit.


Foundationally, the banking system in the Philippines is levelled with secrecy necessary
for its operation and actions. Services provided in this system are not to be disclosed by the
banks even to police. And necessary records of financial transfers are often covered up, or
not necessarily kept—its disposal is often within a few weeks after initial consummation.
Wire transfers and money orders are not often disclosed to the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas
(BSP), and any amount of money can come and go as it pleases.

This environment of secrecy is a breeding ground for organized crime, terrorist


fronts, and criminal enterprises—foreign and domestic—to infiltrate and graft their ill-
gotten wealth into the Philippine banking system: invisible to the eyes of the law, and
unsuspectingly hiding in the vaults and treasuries of our banks and even revenue areas such
as the Bureau of Internal Revenue and Bureau of Customs. Private and public individuals—
such as unscrupulous politicians can even access their ill-gotten funds by even accessing,
in plain sight, their accounts. Bogus off-shore accounts, shell companies, and even casino
spendthrifts can infiltrate our banks and be accessed into with no harassment, question or
checkpoint from the State.

Thus, Republic Act no. 9160 became the norm across the world. To avoid the
Philippines becoming the “Caymans of the East”, Anti-Money Laundering measures were
enacted based on frameworks and indicators provided by the World Bank. These catapulted
the Philippines into the world stage and became the latest, at the time, to instruct, insure,
and secure the public purse from unethical financing and financiers. The measures also
included floodgates against terrorist financing, where in the Philippines it is most apparent.
The predecessor of the law, the Human Security Act of 2007 was also amended, in this
accord, terrorist financing would be quarantined and accounts frozen in the Philippines.
Foreign bank accounts and foreign currency deposits showing an instance of anomaly and
undisclosed sources will also be quarantined. Funds and resources acquired in kidnap for
ransom, to which have plagued the Philippines for quite some time, are to be necessarily
quarantined and controlled. Also, foreign accounts coming from the Bahamas, the
Caymans Islands and Switzerland are now passing through a fourteen-point analysis and
examination process controlling the access of questionable funds before they are grafted
into the banking system.

The most apparent triumph of the AMLA and AMLAC-BSP was the RCBC-Bank
of Bangladesh prosecution wherein about $8,000,000,000 worth of accounts were
completely traced back to anomalous controllers in China and Bangladesh. This broke the
long line of traditions of Bank Secrecy that ultimately terminated, or at least deterred
conspiracy to graft by the state. The AMLA may be young, no less than half-a-century old,
but it has made a mark in protecting the coffers that fed and supplied nutrient not just to
Filipino families, but also to the Filipino economy.

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