THE House committee on banks and financial intermediaries is eyeing the approval in plenary session of the proposed law giving more teeth to the Anti-Money Laundering Act by including the casino industry under the scrutiny of the law when Congress resumes session on May 2.
Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone, the panel chairman, said his committee would want to pass the bill soonest to promote the country’s competitiveness in and transparency of financial transactions.
“We are working double time to approve the measure and hoping to pass this by May in my committee and the plenary,” Evardone said, adding the proposal to include casinos in the coverage of AMLA was now being finalized by a technical working group.
Evardone also welcomed the move of Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III to include casino as this would toughen AMLA following the $81-million Bangladeshi cyber heist, the biggest hoard of dirty money reported to have entered and left the country last year.
“I fully support the move of Senate President Pimentel to include casinos in the coverage of AMLA,” Evardone said.
“This will enhance the country’s competitiveness (in) and transparency of financial transactions. This will also improve the image of the gaming industry as a haven for investors,” Evardone added.
Congress is poised to amend Republic Act 9160 or AMLA of 2001 by including casinos in its coverage as one of the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force, a global anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism watchdog, to avoid the potential blacklisting of the Philippines.
Evardone said he was optimistic the bill would be approved by his panel when Congress resumes sessions after its month-long Lenten break as the committee “agreed in principle to endorse the inclusion of casinos in the law.”
Three measures had been filed at the Lower House seeking to amend RA 9160.
Lawmakers have pointed out that the February 2016 diversion of Bangladeshi funds by hackers to Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. and eventually to local casinos “exposed the vulnerability of these gaming establishments to illegal activities.”
“We should move to be more transparent by amending the law to protect our casinos from money laundering by crime syndicates,” they said.
Evardone earlier stressed the need for Congress to pass the proposed revision to AMLA because “we do not want the billions of pesos in remittances of our OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) to suffer as their hard-earned money will likely face global financial scrutiny and difficulties for being suspected as hot money.”
Evardone said one proposal was to set such amount at P500,000, the same level of transaction that requires banks, insurance companies and other covered institutions to file a report.
“The only issue that remains to be resolved has to do with the threshold amount that would trigger the filing of a suspicion transaction report with the Anti-Money Laundering Council,” said Evardone.