By Jeffrey Damicog The Department of Justice has secured the conviction of a woman for having embezzled P9.8 million from her former company. (MANILA BULLETIN) The DOJ said that the accused, identified as Anabella Ylagan, has been found guilty by the Quezon City Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 223 guilty of 55 counts of violating Section 4(a) of Republic Act No. 9160, the Anti-Money Laundering Law. With this, the RTC sentenced her to imprisonment of seven years for each count and slapped here with the accessory penalties including a fine amounting to P9,860,615.05. Meanwhile, the DOJ lauded the efforts of its National Prosecution Service (NPS) for securing the conviction of Ylagan, a former bank liaison officer of the Sytengco Enterprises Corporation (SEC). Assistant State Prosecutors Gilmarie Fe Pacamarra and Ethel Rea Suril had filed in court a total of 150 counts of violating RA 9160 against the accused based on the complaint filed by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC). For its part, the AMLC acted on the complaint filed by the SEC against Ylagan. “Upon investigation, it appeared that Ylagan, taking advantage of her position, unlawfully took huge amounts of deposits from SEC’s account with HSBC and Chinatrust Commercial Banking Corporation by sending telegraphic transfer/demand draft application forms to the said bank,” the DOJ said. “The forms contained instructions to, and authority for, said banks to debit funds from SEC’s accounts and to transfer the same to the account of a certain Lourdes Liu with Chinabank,” it added. The DOJ said prosecutors were able to establish that “Lui is no other than Annabella Ylagan.” It also added that Ylagan expressly admitted in her affidavits that “she stole the money belonging to the and opened an account in the name of where she diverted the money she stole from .”