No Dirty Money from OFWs Yet — Watchdog

On the first base are the AMLC’s special anti-money laundering investigators, while special prosecutors and state from the Department of Justice cover the second base through prosecuting money laundering cases and mutual legal assistance and extradition matters related to money laundering and terrorist financing.

The third base is also covered, Aquino explains, by AML solicitors under the Office of the Solicitor General who help the AMLC in forfeiture and other remedial proceedings. And the home base is manned by special AML courts. Aquino’s office is in the pitcher’s plate, “manning such (Philippine) money laundering structure”.

For received information on money laundering flows from overseas countries, Aquino says the Philippines is part of a worldwide network of 107 FIUs that have access to each others’ financial intelligence information.

In AMLC’s six-year report, while STRs commonly cover cases such as drug trafficking and illegal gambling, none were linked to human trafficking or human smuggling, of which Philippine victims involve transient women and children.

Since the Philippines’ inclusion in the FATF list of NCCTs in 2002, international groups have suspected that remittances from overseas Filipinos are mixed up in the flows of laundered money, and even on terrorist financing.

Currently, the STRs that the AMLC flagged were linked to violations of the Securities Regulation Code, drug trafficking, swindling/estafa/fraud, kidnap for ransom, robbery, local illegal numbers games such as jueteng and masiao, and graft and corruption cases.

The Philippines was de-listed from FATF’s NCCT list on February 2005

But “we will be always on guard,” Aquino says, pointing to a Bearskin hat that British Army guards wear.

That hat, he explains, was a gift after helping a British financial intelligence team crack a case some years ago.

Hopefully, that hat can keep out the heat involved in tracking dirty money. (OFW Journalism Consortium) (pinoypress.net)