Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has directed pawnshops to strictly implement identification requirements for customers to help ensure that items being pawned are not stolen goods or illicit covers for money laundering.
Representatives of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) are set to visit the Philippines next month to evaluate the anti-money-laundering environment in the country and decide whether it deserves to be taken out of the unflattering “gray list.”
It’s back to the drawing board for more refinements on the Anti-Money Laundering Act when Congress re-convenes after the midterm elections.
The latest amendments to the law were not good enough for the Financial Action Task Force to remove the Philippines from the list of countries that are not fully compliant with its anti-money laundering standards
The Anti-Money Laundering Council hopes to persuade Congress to amend again the law against dirty money transactions, saying that the continued exclusion of casinos from a list of establishments required to report their financial activities has been hurting the Philippines’ image abroad.
The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) has stepped up its campaign against dirty money transactions by tightening the reportorial requirements that banks and other entities are required to submit.
The lawyer of Deputy Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr. of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has accused businessman Roberto Ongpin of resorting to persecution.
The clock is ticking on the deadline set by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering for the Philippine government to further amend the Anti-Money Laundering Act and plug perceived loopholes in the law.
Businessman Roberto Ongpin has urged lawmakers to consider amending the current law against money laundering, saying that the law, in its current form, can easily be abused for political ends.
HSBC’s record $1.9 billion payment to settle a U.S. investigation into money laundering that involved Mexican drug cartels and nations such as Iran is a new setback for the reputation of banks after a series of headline-grabbing scandals.
A global anti-money laundering watchdog has kept the Philippines on a so-called “gray” list of countries being monitored for compliance with internationally accepted standards against harboring tax evaders.
US prosecutors are looking into whether British bank HSBC was involved in laundering money for Mexican drug cartels and moving cash for Saudi Arabian banks with ties to terrorists, The New York Times reported Saturday.
Bank supervision in the Philippines is strict enough to help ensure unscrupulous individuals and terrorist groups are not able to launder money in the country, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has assured in the wake of a controversy involving a US branch of Standard Chartered Bank.
