The Philippines Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) is adopting new rules that will impose tougher regulations and higher fines on individuals and banks found to have engaged in money laundering activities.
Under these new rules, the council can enforce administrative sanctions against violators of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2001 (AMLA), which can include both penalty and non-penalty measures such as, fines, reprimands, warnings, and other actions.
The new regulations also grant penalties to be determined in congruity with the wealth of the accused, thus creating a classification ranking based on the value of assets, but should not exceed P500,000 (approximately $9,800 USD) per violation.
The Bank of South Pacific (BSP), the Philippines’ central bank, has already fined several financial institutions for anti-money laundering (AML) violations including a recent record fine of P1 Billion (approximately $19.6 Million USD) in 2016 against Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) for allowing itself to be used as a conduit in the laundering of $81 Million that was stolen by cyber-criminals from the Bangladesh Bank.
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