The Philippine president, Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has ordered government agencies in the country to immediately move to remedy its deficiencies in regards to anti-money laundering and terrorist financing, in order to remove the Philippines from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) ‘grey list’ within this year.
Following a sectoral meeting in Malcacañan Palace in Manila on Tuesday, a government representative noted that Marcos aims to “trigger the exit process from this FATF ‘grey listing’” within 2024.
The country has already managed to comply with 10 of the 18 deficiencies found by the FATF, however still needs work on areas such as mitigating risks associated with casino junkets and oversight of “designated non-banking and business professionals,” which includes casinos.
The government representative said that some of the eight deficiencies had been “partly addressed” while one was “not yet properly addressed”.
Anti-Money Laundering Council Secretariat executive director Matthew David noted that “Everybody believes we are on the right track and the President has commended the work of different agencies of government. The President also directed the agencies of government to continue with their actions and to continuously sustain good coordination among themselves — between the law enforcement and other government agencies”.
David expressed that the country is pushing for a “self-imposed deadline” of January this year to exit the list noting that “the longer we are in the grey list, the bigger the possibility or the higher risk that we will enter the black list”.
Such blacklisting would also highly affect overseas Filipino workers’ remittances to the country – including an “increase in cost […] more stringent requirements, or sometimes the transactions may be denied or disapproved. We don’t want that to happy,” noted the official.
