The Anti-Money Laundering Council said Friday it is investigating 57 persons of interest who were possibly involved in the Wirecard controversy that stirred the domestic financial system recently.
AMLC executive director Mel Georgie Racela said in an online press briefing Friday these persons included locals and foreign nationals, especially Germans.
“Included in the investigations are the bank officials who forged the documents, [some] government officials and German nationals. So far, we have not coordinated with other jurisdictions [aside from Germany],” Racela said.
Racela said based on the agency’s investigations, no amount of money connected with Wirecard entered the domestic financial system.
“We are now coordinating with law-enforcement agencies in building up the case against those individuals who violated AMLA. We are in that level right now,” Racela said.
He said AMLC shared the information with their German counterparts and “it is now up to them to further investigate the incident.”
Racela said that “no local companies were connected” to the alleged fraudulent Wirecard activities.
He said AMLC’s any recommendation to file charges against those involved “will be based on the evidence we gathered.”
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Benjamin Diokno earlier said none of the missing $2.1 billion of German payments company Wirecard entered the domestic financial system.
Diokno said the international financial scandal just used the names of two Philippines banks—BDO Unibank Inc. and Bank of the Philippine Islands—in an attempt to cover the perpetrators’ tracks.
He said both BDO and BPI had already stated that the German firm was not their client nor did they have any business relationship with the company.
Diokno said both banks also informed Ernst & Young, the external auditor, that the documents that attested to the presence of the supposed funds were spurious.
Racela said that as the investigations found that no money entered the two banks’ accounts, “there is no reason to investigate the banks themselves. Maybe there was lack of internal controls in the said banks. This thing is being tackled by the BSP.”
On the issue of the recent UCPB cyber heist that reportedly cost the bank around P167 million through massive ATM withdrawals and fund transfers in June, Racela said investigations were ongoing and AMLC was in close coordination with the BSP and law enforcement agencies, particularly the National Bureau of Investigation.
The National Bureau of Investigation said its operatives had arrested several Nigerian nationals who were being linked to the UCPB cyber heist.