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BSP Receives Award for Anti-Money Laundering Efforts

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Editing and Additional Reporting by Nathaniel Cajuday

The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) applauded and gave an award of appreciation to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) for its “proactive and assiduous efforts” in preventing money laundering (ML) and terrorism financing in the country. 

The appreciation was given during the central bank’s 21st-anniversary celebration, spearheaded by BSP Governor and AMLC Chairman Felipe M. Medalla. According to him, the AMLC recognized the BSP for implementing new requirements for unregistered remittance operators and for applying ML-risk-based supervision of financial institutions.  

The award was received by BSP Director Dindo R. Santos, Insurance Commissioner Dennis B. Funa, and BSP Director Florabelle M. Santos-Madrid; along with them were the Governor and AMLC Secretariat Executive Director Matthew M. David.

APPRECIATED! The AMLC Board awards the leadership of the Central Bank for the latter’s effort against anti-money laundering.

Accordingly, the BSP and the AMLC stressed that they will continue to work together to warrant that all BSP-supervised entities are compliant with the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2001 (AMLA), as amended. 

The regulated institutions under the AMLA include banks, offshore banking units, quasi-banks, trust entities, non-stock savings and loan associations, pawnshops, foreign exchange dealers, money changers, remittance agents, electronic money issuers, and other financial institutions.

Aside from the award given to the central bank, the AMLC also recognized the contributions of its partner agencies and other stakeholders in implementing and sustaining a whole-of-nation approach to combating money laundering and terrorism financing annually.

It can be recalled that the Philippines is among the grey-listed countries of “dirty money” global watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for the first quarter of 2022. Being a grey-listed country means that the government is under increased monitoring because they have been found to have strategic deficiencies in efforts to counter money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing.

But despite being on the “grey list,” the Philippines has made a “high-level political commitment” to work with the global financial caretaker to boost their AML and TF regime, since the country was last included in the list in 2013.

Consequently, as the cryptocurrency and digital asset industry continues to grow in the Philippines, the central bank requested the legislation last August for the ratification of the digital asset act, which shall draw lines on the statutes on digital assets and the digital space which includes non-fungible tokens (NFT) and crypto. (Read more: BSP Seeks Passage of Digital Asset Law)

The BSP also issued an advisory that “strongly urges” the public not to deal with Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP)  that are unregistered or domiciled abroad. The central bank reiterated that foreign-based VASPs may present additional challenges in enforcing legal recourse and consumer protection and redress mechanisms for local customers. (Read more: BSP Cautions the Public Against Engaging with Unregistered and Foreign Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs))

This article is published on BitPinas: BSP Receives Award for Anti-Money Laundering Efforts

Disclaimer: BitPinas articles and its external content are not financial advice. The team serves to deliver independent, unbiased news to provide information for Philippine-crypto and beyond.

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