The Anti-Money Laundering Council is preparing to file cases within two weeks against other officials of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. in connection with the $81-million money laundering from the account of Bank of Bangladesh in Federal Reserve in New York to an RCBC branch in February.
AMLC secretariat deputy director Vencent Salido said the council would definitely file cases to find the “missing link” and complete the facts of the scam.
“We filed cases against the branch manager, against Kim Wong, against the officers of Philrem [Service Corp.]. Now, there’s a missing link there. What about the other RCBC officials,” Salido said at the sidelines of a Senate hearing Monday.
“The facts wouldn’t be complete without them. Because the transactions went through them, the exchanges, the foreign exchanges went through RCBC. Without it, the resolution would be half-baked… We still seek clearance to the council. We’re still recommending [to file the cases],” Salido said.
Salido did not say how many bank officials would be charged.
He said the hard part of the case would be how to know if the officials were aware of the crime. He said looking into the counter-affidavit of the other personalities, “they all denied having knowledge of the predicate crime.”
Salido said there were other ways to establish direct knowledge and circumstances based on the documents of the transaction.
“It is like, you know exactly that the transaction is illegal but why did you allow it? So we had to find documentary evidence. In so far as testimony, no one will tell us from the banks,” Salido said.
Senate investigations earlier found out that the $81-million account stolen by cyber thieves from the Bangladeshi bank entered the Philippine financial system through the branch of RCBC on Jupiter Street in Makati City.
Former president and chief executive Lorenzo Tan resigned from his post at the height of Senate investigations. He was succeeded by Gil Buenaventura.
Bangko Sentral imposed a P1-billion penalty on RCBC for its involvement in the scam. The fine is considered the biggest-ever imposed on erring financial institution under Bangko Sentral’s supervision. RCBC already paid half of the amount a few weeks ago. The other half would be paid a year after.
Bangko Sentral said this affirmed its strong commitment to ensure the stability of the country’s financial system through strong and effective regulation of financial institutions.
Buenaventura said in a previous statement the bank already made provisions for the penalty payment.
Buenaventura said RCBC’s focus was to move forward and continue its ongoing program to put in place more robust processes, systems, and checks and balances.
“As a result, we expect this newly strengthened RCBC to be even more profitable and efficient both in terms of operations and in serving its customers,” he said.