Wanted: Clean-up crew

Drug dealers, corrupt officials from abroad, as well as some local businessmen and pricey lawyers are using the porous Philippine financial and legal system to wash and stash their ill-gotten cash. Others have simply hid pallets of cash at home, in a vault at a mistress’ house or several safety deposit boxes. Authorities might also be shocked to discover that criminals are laundering their dirty money through real estate by buying entire floors of condominium projects.

Someone suggested that I write about white-collar crimes in the Philippines, particularly those that involve complicity of certain “abogado de campanilla” or high-priced high-profile law firms. According to the caller who is also a veteran public servant and elected official, the Duterte administration needs to clamp down on corporations as well as lawyers who have orchestrated the creation of corporations using dummies and fronts. What caught my attention was the suggestion to investigate the financial capacities and history of people claiming or listed as owners/incorporators of numerous corporations and companies. Some emerging businessmen and leaders are the equivalent of “typhoons and not taipans,” or people who enjoy telling the trusting and unsuspecting media and the public that they own company A, B and C when in fact they are merely the physical face to the financial investments and actual ownership of “Ghost Investors.” Ghosts because their money have a somewhat supernatural if not demonic and illegal source.

I would not even go as high on the corporate elevators. I once knew of a used car salesman from 10 years back who went around town buying high priced “collectible” cars, store them for months, and then eventually sell them at a much lower price to buyers. After some wining and dining, I eventually discovered that the guy had “Japanese investors” who were not bossy or demanding as long as they got their money back. The car salesman was perfectly happy getting commissions with every flip and the investors had no qualms at getting less than they gave. That was quite strange because who in his right mind would invest P1 million and take home P800,000? Soon enough we determined that his investors were “Yakuza” or gangster type guys and their “lose money scheme” was nothing more than money laundering.

Last year I learned of a corrupt political appointee in government who collected pay-offs by directing them to a bank in Metro Manila. Unfortunately because government officials are also protected by the bank secrecy law, the EO based Freedom of Information order of President Duterte can’t do zip to open the account of the government official to scrutiny not even by his bosses or an investigating team from his place of work. There is no doubt in my mind that we need to take away the protective covering for government officials particularly at the LGU level where a big number are pinpointed to asking for bribes or pay-offs.

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Senator Grace Poe recently wanted to find out if the two telcos in the Philippines have a free mobile disaster alert as provided for in her bill RA 10639 that she authored. It might interest the good Senator to know that even if the telcos do have such an app and a free mobile disaster alert, it would be rendered useless in numerous provinces outside Metro Manila because a number of mayors and local officials demand SOP or standard operating payoff, or they charge certain contractors ridiculous sums for real property tax on the proposed site.

The ridiculous sums pegged for RPT is actually a tactic designed to force or convince the telcos to simply negotiate on the SOP rather than pay for the high RPT. Imagine having to pay SOP for proposed sites in the provinces of Pampanga, Bulacan and Batangas? Imagine 320 proposed cell sites not being built in Rizal, Laguna, Cavite and Isabela simply because of ridiculously high RPT slapped on the sites? In Ilocos province I remember a contractor who had to go to court to put a stop to the extortion. When typhoons strike we all curse the telcos for having no signal, but when they want to remedy the problem and create the needed network, mayors and city officials use every form of extortion. The question now is, how serious is President Rodrigo Duterte about taking down corrupt LGU officials and when is his government seriously going to start investigating the “hi-fi” or highly financed lifestyle of local officials.

There are many ways and many people who will certainly take advantage of the Philippine situation, but at least we have a Bangko Sentral that is intent on enforcing rules such as imposing a P1-billion fine on a local bank because of the Bangladesh fund scam. The question is: has Malacañang put into consideration plans to consolidate a team with members from the BSP, Office of the President, DOJ/NBI and the PNP and SEC to scrutinize corporate fraud, predatory corporate practices particularly of the pre-need and medical insurance industry, and money laundering being done by drug gangs as well as corrupt overseas officials who use casinos to wash and stash their cash?

One strategy would be for President Duterte not to wait until December 30 to demonetize old bills. Instead, the new government should immediately change all the existing P500 and 1000 bills now in circulation and print a new set of currency with a new face within 90 days exactly. This will flush out all the money that drug dealers have stashed away in vaults and boxes just like their Mexican counterparts who when busted by DEA agents, literally had rooms with millions and millions of US dollars that were stacked in pallets all the way up to the ceilings. If the president decides to print new P500 and P1000 bills within 90 days, Malacañang and the BSP should issue an accompanying information drive to warn businesses and corporations from accepting large amounts of cash unless they have been determined to be from a “legal source.” The scene almost feels so movie-like but all of it has been observed in real life. As they say hit them where it hurts and it’s not at the street level. Flush their money out by making it obsolete.

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