First Posted 23:52:00 03/08/2011

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20110308-324285/Anti-money-laundering-council-wants-to-restore-power-to-freeze-assets

MANILA, Philippines—The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLAC) is seeking the restoration of a power to freeze assets to avoid a repeat of the cases of ex-military comptrollers Carlos Garcia and Jacinto Ligot.

Garcia and Ligot, both accused of amassing wealth while serving as comptrollers in the Armed Forces, had managed to withdraw huge sums from their bank accounts before these could be frozen.

AMLAC executive director Vicente Aquino agreed on Tuesday with amending the Anti-Money Laundering Act to restore the body's authority to freeze assets to prevent leakages as what had happened in the Garcia and Ligot's cases.

"Based on our experience, it's a lot better if Amlac's authority to freeze is restored,'' he told the Congressional Oversight Committee on the Anti-Money Laundering Law.

It used to wield such power before the law was amended, he said.

Aquino admitted that the law was "utterly inadequate'' to address leakages, such as the withdrawals made by Garcia and Ligot.

Under the present law, he said, the AMLAC should file a petition with the Court of Appeals to freeze assets related to an unlawful activity, and before it could do that, it would have to go through the statutory council of the Solicitor General.

"By the time of filing, many eyes have seen the petition,'' he said, indicating that the object of the petition would have been duly informed and taken measures to evade it.

The Senate convened the committee to hear proposed amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering Law to plug loopholes.

This came on the heels of the blue ribbon committee's inquiry into Garcia's plea bargain with prosecutors, where Garcia and Ligot had been painted as key players in a corruption scandal in the military.

Ex-military officer George Rabusa had testified that the two comptrollers helped convert billions of pesos in soldiers' pay into a slush fund that went to the pockets of the AFP chiefs down to comptrollers.

In the hearings, former Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo said the whole Garcia family withdrew between P50 million and P70 million from their bank accounts before the plunder case was filed against Garcia in 2004.

Ligot and his family, on the other hand, withdrew P128 million from their accounts before the CA issued a freeze order in October 2004.