AMLC extends deadline of MTPP compliance
By Lee C. Chipongian
The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) has extended for another six months or until June 21 this year the formulation of the Money Laundering/Terrorism Financing Prevention Program (MTPP) that are required of designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBP).
In an AMLC regulatory issuance, the agency’s executive director Mel Georgie B. Racela said they have approved the extension of the deadline for the formulation of MTPP which expired last December 21, 2021.
The MTPP is required under the 2021 Anti-Money Laundering/Counter-Terrorism Financing guidelines for DNFBP.
Racela in the memo said “failure to formulate an MTPP on or before the deadline (June 21, 2022) shall subject the non-compliant covered person to enforcement actions.”
Based on the latest AMLC risk and vulnerability review of registered DNFBP, the sector has yielded P20.61 billion worth of covered transaction reports (CTRs) from 2019 until 2021 in an effort to detect unlawful activity or money laundering.
DNFBPs include jewelry dealers, dealers in precious metals and precious stones whose business is trading in precious stones, and company service providers or CSPs.
This sector also include: lawyers and accountants; and offshore gaming operators or OGOs and their service providers or SPs that are supervised, accredited or regulated by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR) or Appropriate Government Agencies or AGAs.
Based on the AMLC’s report on the “2021 Risk Review on AMLC-Registered DNFBPs and an overview of the Risk-Based Supervisory Framework”, in monitoring DNFBP’s illegal practices, they have accumulated some P20.61 billion of CTRs and about 96 percent or P19.77 billion were filed by CSPs from 2019 until 2021. Meantime, accountants’ CTRs amounted to P841 million while jewelry dealers had only P2.44 million.
However, most of the market are unregulated and the report are just from registered DNFBPs which are limited. Only 4,020 of 35,752 industry players are registered with the AMLC as of end-June 2021. As for CSPs which made up the bulk of the three-year CTRs, only 34 are AMLC-registered out of 88 players.
AMLC said covered persons filed 4,369 CTRs from 2019 to 2021 and about 18 suspicious transaction reports (STRs) were found. The CSPs accounted for 4,147 of CTRs. But, all of the 18 STRs came from the filings of the jewelry dealers.