Funny

The Sereno Court, it seems, has become prone to making funny decisions.

In its ruling, the majority of the Court found the Comelec in grave abuse of its authority by finding willful misrepresentation by candidate Poe in her filings. The Court, however, did not actually rule on her citizenship nor on her residency.

Funny as the decision on the Poe candidacy might be, it pales in comparison to the decision rendered by the Supreme Court last December stopping field tests on genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The decision stopped confined field trials for BT talong, convinced that information on the genetically enhanced eggplant variety was lacking. But the very purpose of the confined field trials was precisely to gather that information!

The consequence of the Court ruling, which outraged scientists and farmers alike, was to stop research aspiring to answer the questions that critics of genetic modification are asking. That puts the science, and the great scientific infrastructure we built over the years to improve crop resilience and productivity, in suspended animation.

One news report by a newspaper whose journalism tends to be slippery appeared confused about the SC ruling. The report on the ruling said “scientists broke biosafety law in releasing BT talong.” That makes the scientists lawbreakers.

Actually, what the SC was trying to say in its ruling was that the presence of a safety framework had to be ensured. Until the Court is satisfied, confined field tests were ordered suspended. BT talong, the genetically enhanced eggplant variety has not been released into the open market.

The abovementioned report just went on and on with its faulty reporting, saying that “regulatory agencies failed to conduct an independent risk assessment.” The fact is risk assessment is an ongoing process as the experiments are conducted. It is not a final condition. It is the Department of Agriculture that is mandated by existing policy to conduct the continuing risk assessment.

Had the response of the concerned government agencies to the SC ruling been slower, the Court might have plunged the country into a food crisis. What happened is that the concerned agencies – including the DOST, the DENR and the DA – immediately formed a task force to craft guidelines that will satisfy the Court even as the ruling reveals the magistrates’ poor grasp of the scientific issues and procedures involved here.

Without the quick response of the multi-agency task force, the Court ruling might have had the effect of shutting down the dispersal of genetically enhanced crops already in common use. One of these is what is called “Golden Rice.”

“Golden Rice” is now in the advanced stages of development by the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) in Los Banos in cooperation with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The genetically enhanced rice variety intends to solve the problem of Vitamin A deficiency.

Sloppy

The Senate hearing on the $81 million hacked from the Central Bank of Bangladesh might be entertaining. But it will do little to ensure recovery of the stolen funds.

The money exited the banks, with haste. From hereon, the funds will be laundered, rinsed and laundered again – until it becomes no longer possible to trace these.

Contrast our response with that of Sri Lanka, where the hackers tried to launder $21 million of the stolen Bangladeshi money. Sri Lankan authorities quickly impounded the money, to be returned to Bangladesh.

It is easy for money to flow into our bank accounts. RCBC has the most modern information system to enable flow-through of funds. It should not be as easy to take out money from the accounts, especially if they come in such volumes as to raise a thousand red flags.

From what we now know, RCBC branch manager Maia Deguito not only failed to ensure the integrity of the accounts opened to receive the laundered money, she hurriedly disbursed the money before authorities could be alerted. It had to take a direct call from the Bangladeshi central bank governor to the BSP head for our anti-money laundering mechanisms to start. Even then, it now appears the authorities were a step behind the criminals.

By some bizarre coincidence, the RCBC Jupiter branch’s CCTV system was out of commission during the time large amounts of cash were being moved out of the branch using ordinary cars. That denies us conclusive means to determine who actually took out the money.

Notwithstanding all the pieces of information now known, nothing was done to suspend the operations of companies like Philrem. The remittance company, at the very least, facilitated the extraction of the stolen money from the banking system to the casinos – the real laundering mechanisms.

What we so obviously need at this point is an international anti-fraud task force possibly spearheaded by the FBI. Apart from our own NBI, the task force needs the cooperation of the Hong Kong police and China’s investigative authorities. We do not know if steps are being taken in this direction.

Especially during an election campaign period, it is hard to rely on politicians conducting high-profile public hearings to ferret out the whole truth and recommend effective counter-measures. Often, such politicized processes crate only the semblance of something being done to address the scourge of money laundering.

Of course, our policies need to be tweaked in the wake of this embarrassing scandal. Our bank secrecy law might be made less rigid. The AMLC might be enhanced – and perhaps weaned away from being politicized as well.

To mitigate the national embarrassment caused by this incident, our anti-fraud authorities must recover at least some of the hacked funds.