Albay Rep. Joey Salceda is outraged at the complacency of Bureau of Customs and Anti-Money Laundering Council in flagging the entry of $1 billion in dirty money into the Philippines.
Salceda said only 1,015 tourists declared to have brought in more than $10,000 out of the 12 million foreign arrivals in 2019. Among these declared bulk foreign currency imports, Salceda said P28.6 billion were brought in by four groups – Rodriguez group, Philippine Offshore Gaming Operation (POGO), Singaporean and Chinese groups – and he was aghast that authorities didn’t even care to ask where the money was sourced or where they intended to use these funds.
“I know it’s legal to bring any amount of of money into the country as long as you declare it but these huge sums of money should have sent alarm bells ringing in their heads. That’s common sense,” said Salceda.
Salceda said what’s more worrisome was that the estimated $1 billion dirty money that came into the country last year were brought in under the noses of authorities with police and military escorts helping
these bulk currency carriers. “Why would you need an escort if you are going to declare these money or you are going to use them legally?” asked Salceda who noted that a hand-carry bag could contain up to $4 million in cash.
During an executive session, Salceda said the BOC, AMLC, Bureau of Immigration (BI), National Intelligence Coordination Agency (NICA), National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) were unanimous in their belief that that these funds were being used for money laundering, POGO crimes, and terrorism. Although there was disagreement on the funds being used for drug trafficking, NICA said drug money should be moving out of the country, Salceda argued that the Philippines could be a transshipment point.
“This is worse than BI’s ‘pastillas’ illegal Chinese entry scheme. This is ‘leche flan’,” said Salceda.
He warned that if the Department of Finance and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas remain idle, the country could get delisted from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for being a high risk base for terrorism financing and money laundering due to the influx of $1 billion dirty money.
Salceda said the House has formed a technical working group to plug the policy gaps and converge all concerned agencies immediately at the point of entry so they could immediately ask people bringing in huge amounts of cash.
