A bill that calls for casinos to be covered by the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2001 has been submitted to the Philippine House of Representatives, local media reported. The proposed legislation came as a response to President Rodrigo Duterte’s recently announced campaign for strengthening the country’s anti-money laundering prevention and regulation policy.
Sponsored by Quezon City Rep. Feliciano Belmonte Jr., House Bill 14 requires that local gambling venues report any covered or suspicious money transactions to the Philippine Anti-Money Laundering Council, deploy more effective customer identification and record keeping systems, prevent any transactions that involve the conversion of money without it being used for gambling purposes, etc. The proposed legislation is also aimed at securing the integrity of financial institutions and banking transactions carried out within the country’s borders.
The Philippine Anti-Money Laundering Act came into effect in 2001, addressing increasing concerns over illicit money transfers. The law has been amended several times over the past several years but has never covered the country’s casino sector.
Mr. Belmonte explained his decision to propose the addition of local casinos under the Act’s coverage with the fact that legislators wanted to prevent situations like the Bangladesh Bank heist from happening in the Philippines.
Earlier this year, using the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, hackers broke into the Bangladesh Bank and tried to transfer a little less than $1 billion to various Asian banks. The amount of $81 million reached the Philippines in four transactions and eventually made it to local gambling venues and junket operators.
Mr. Belmonte reminded that with casinos not being included under the coverage of the country’s current anti-money laundering regulations, it was particularly difficult for the money to be traced and recovered. The legislator further pointed out that his bill provides the necessary provisions to make the country and its laws compliant to the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force.
The Task Force was established back in 1989 at a G7 Summit in Paris with the aim of coping with money laundering and the challenges arising from it. In 2008, the Philippines was placed in FATF’s gray list after multiple warnings of poor anti-money laundering regulations, including ones concerned with the illicit movement of funds for terrorism. The absence of major industries such as gambling within the laws’ coverage was also noted by the Task Force.
Four years later, the Philippines left the watch list but was still among the countries to be urged to pay special attention to its anti-money laundering regulations.
