http://www.malaya.com.ph/12302010/busi1.html

Obviously learning from a Supreme Court decision that practically left inutile the Anti-Money Laundering Council, Sen. Sergio Osmeña III has filed Sen. Bill 2484 that gives more and sharper teeth in the search for stolen or dirty funds parked in practically all institutions that deal with money.

It is explicitly provided in the Osmena bill that the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) is required to "apply before the Court of Appeals, ex parte, for the freezing of any monetary instrument or property alleged to be related in any way to any unlawful activity."

It will be recalled that under the present anti-money laundering law, there is no direct provision that petitions for a search may be done ex parte.

The Osmena bill makes ex-parte petition mandatory.

The anti-money laundering council has been frustrated in its search for laundered money because the courts – from regional trial courts all the way up to the Supreme Court – have not been consistent in their decisions.

In one instance, the regional trial court in Manila, sustained an ex parte petition by the AMLC. Then another RTC also in Manila reversed the ruling.

The case was brought to the Court of Appeals, which denied the ex parte petition.

Upon motion for reconsideration, the appellate court granted the petition for a search without informing the owners of the suspected laundered money.

The same CA, again on motion for reconsideration reversed itself. The case went up to the Supreme Court. Then Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban allowed the search ex parte and issued a temporary restraining order stopping the CA and a regional trial court from prohibiting the search.

Panganiban’s decision was questioned in the form of a memorandum for reconsideration with a prayer for injunction by then Transportation Secretary Pantaleon Alvarez and Lilia Cheng, whose name appears in a list with some Germans working for Fraport, the German joint venture partner of Philippine International Air Transport Corp. (Piatco), as having alleged laundered money.

Sometime in 2008, the second division of the Court in the pen of then Associate Justice Dante Tinga, denied with finality the opposition of the AMLC against the petition of Alvarez and Lilia Cheng.

Mrs. Cheng is the wife of Cheng Yong, majority stockholder of Piatco which built the NAIA Terminal III in Paranaque City.

The Cheng family has reportedly migrated to Australia.

Under the Osmena bill, the application ex parte is not only for the search but for the freeze of suspected accounts as well.

The proposal also allows the Bangko Sentral to "inquire into or examine any deposit or investment including related web accounts with any banking institution or non-bank financial institution when the examination is made in the course of a periodic or special examination…"

In effect the BSP is authorized to examine what it may believe are laundered funds in the course of its examination of the status of banks and the rest of the financial institutions that it supervises.

The authority is drawn from the fact that the proposal makes the governor of the Bangko Sentral chairman of the AMLC with the insurance commissioner and the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission as members.

The Osmeña proposal also requires "covered" institution to report to the AMLC "all covered transactions and suspicious transactions within five working days from the occurrence" or discovery of questionable transactions.

Further, the bill stipulates that officers and employees of covered institutions "are prohibited from communicating, directly or indirectly, in any manner or by any means, to any person or entity, media, the fact that a covered or suspicious transaction has been reported or about to be reported."

This provision has the effect of doing away with ex parte petitions to be filed with the Court of Appeals in the sense that covered institutions are required to make reports on suspected transactions.

Osmeña expanded the coverage of the search for laundered money to include quasi- and transfer companies, pre-need companies, and all other institutions supervised or regulated by the Insurance Commission; securities dealers, brokers, salesmen, investment houses, and other similar entities managing securities or rendering services as investment agent, advisor or consultant;

Mutual funds, closed-end investment companies, common trust funds, other similar entities and other entities administering or otherwise dealing in currency, commodities, or financial derivatives based there on, valuable objects, cash substitutes, and other similar instruments or property supervised or regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.