No Dirty Money from OFWs Yet — Watchdog

By JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO
www.ofwjournalism.net

MANILA — Dirty money passing through or flowing into the country as monitored by the Philippine anti-money laundering unit hasn’t involved overseas Filipino workers yet, its executive director said.

Of the 18,269 suspicious transactions the Anti-Money Laundering Council flagged for the past six years ending 2007, none of these are linked to formal and informal flows of earnings by OFWs, data from AMLC revealed.

“So far, Filipino remitters have been compliant” to money laundering regulations, AMLC executive director Vicente Aquino said.

Aquino spoke to the OFW Journalism Consortium before a US court sentenced a man who admitted transferring approximately US$15 million to bank accounts owned or controlled by co-conspirators in the Philippines. The money was part of a $20-million scheme to defraud the Export-Import Bank of the United States.

The statement dated March 1 issued by Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and US Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor of the District of Columbia didn’t expound on how that much amount of money was transferred to Philippine bank accounts.

With remittances pumping Philippine consumption, monitoring its flow becomes highly important as a credible economic instrument.

Remittance flows to the Philippines is the world’s third largest, according to recent World Bank ranking.

If the AMLC finds something irregular, it flags a Suspicious Transaction Report (STR).

However, none of those STRs covering overseas Filipinos’ remittances have been flagged, Aquino added.

“They have no derogatory record” with the AMLC, Aquino said.

STRs in banks and non-bank financial institutions number to 15,469, AMLC data showed. Government-sourced STRs number to 2,679, insurance STRs number to 91, and STRs in securities number to 30.

All these STRs cover a total of nearly 104 million transactions, AMLC data showed.

Aquino said the AMLC had frozen a total of nearly P406 million in funds from banks and insurance proceeds. Some P272 million of the total is in Philippine peso. Meanwhile, the peso equivalents of those for other currencies are P125.48 million for US dollar transactions, P1.6 million for Japanese Yen transactions, P7.8 million for Hong Kong dollar transactions, and P60,596 for Euro transactions.

Vigilance

AQUINO says despite the spotless record of OFWs in these transactions, the AMLC remains monitoring remittances.

Such is not an easy task since banks no longer hold the monopoly of platform for money transfer.