EDITORIAL - More teeth vs dirty money

The country has avoided being blacklisted as a haven for dirty money after President Duterte signed into law on Friday last week Republic Act 10927, which amended the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2001 or RA 9160 to include casinos.

Placing casinos under AMLA coverage is one of the two requirements for escaping a blacklist this year by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force. The other is the inclusion of tax evasion among the predicate crimes covered by RA 9160.

Yesterday, President Duterte repeated before a business conference his commitment to make his government clean. Opening tax evasion to the scrutiny of the anti-money laundering police is an indispensable tool in fighting corruption. The President should use his enormous public approval and trust ratings to persuade his congressional supporters to correct what looks like a deliberate omission from the coverage of the law.

Casinos were excluded from AMLA coverage because of lobbying by lawmakers with interests in the business. It also took many years for lawmakers to include corruption and related offenses among the predicate crimes covered by AMLA. Self-preservation is also likely the principal reason for the exclusion of tax evasion from the coverage of the law.

American gangster Al Capone could not be pinned down for murders attributed to his thugs. But he was brought down using laws against racketeering and tax evasion. With pervasive corruption in the Philippines, a law against racketeering should have been passed a long time ago. But legislators who would be hit by such a law have made sure any such proposal would not be entertained in Congress.

An alternative is the strict enforcement of laws against tax evasion. This could pin down gambling lords, drug traffickers, crooked public officials and other beneficiaries of dirty money. Such a campaign would benefit immensely from assistance from the anti-money laundering police. But the offense is not covered by AMLA.

Also still excluded from AMLA coverage are cybercrimes, certain types of illegal gambling other than jueteng and masiao, violations of banking and insurance laws, falsification of documents, financing of weapons of mass destruction, and violations of the Data Privacy Act and Access Devices Act such as the cloning of credit cards.

President Duterte’s anti-corruption net can catch the big fish by applying laws against money laundering. The wider the net, the better for his campaign.