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Anti-Money Laundering Council rules
Nov 20, 2001
 

Indicative of the haste and frenzy that attended the passage of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2001 is the existence of contradictory provisions on the very simple matter of designating the officials who should promulgate the rules and regulations to implement the law. In other laws, the rules and regulations are issued by the implementing agency. Thus, revenue regulations are issued by the Secretary of Finance upon the recommendation of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. Our honorable legislators, have, of course, their unenviable ways of making something very simple extremely complex.

Section 19 of RepublicAct No. 9160 creates a Congressional Oversight Committee which, in the second paragraph of the section, is granted the power, among other powers, "to review or revise the implementing rules issued by the Anti-Money Laundering Council within 30 days from the promulgation of the said rules." Ignoring for the moment the constitutional infirmity of a legislative veto on an purely executive function (a position taken by the Supreme Court in the case of Philconsa v. Enriquez, 235 SCRA 506), it is clear that under Section 19 the implementing rules are to be "issued by the Anti-Money Laundering Council".

But the first sentence of Section 18 of the same law states that "within 30 days from the effectivity of this Act, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Insurance Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission shall promulgate the rules and regulations to implement effectively the provisions of this Act." Thus, the entities that are mandated by Section 18 to promulgate the rules are Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Insurance Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Not the Anti-Money Laundering Council.

Which house of Congress is to blame for this inconsistency? The legislative history of RA 9160 shows that the House of Representatives version was House Bill No. 3083 and the Senate version was Senate Bill No. 1745.

House Bill No. 3083 had in mind, as implementing agency, simply a unit at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas "to function as the Anti-Money Laundering Unit (AMLU)". Consequently, it was the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, in coordination with all the concerned supervising authorities, that "shall promulgate the rules and regulations to implement effectively the provisions of this Act" (Sec. 16, H.B. No. 3083). The House bill, by the way, did not establish any Congressional Oversight Committee, much less invest it with power to revise the regulations. The latter would not have passed the critical eye of constitutional experts Representative Exequiel Javier and Oscar Moreno.

Senate Bill No. 1745 is the clear culprit. This bill also created a "unit", but this "unit" was not to be a part of the BSP. It was envisioned to be composed of the BSP governor, as chairman, and the SEC chairman and Insurance Commissioner as members. Section 15 of Bill No. 1745 created a Congressional Oversight Committee that was, among other duties, supposed "to review or revise the implementing rules issued by the anti-money laundering unit within 30 days from the promulgation of the said rules"

But Section 14 of the same Senate Bill No. 1745 provides that "the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Insurance Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission shall promulgate the rules and regulations to implement effectively the provisions of this act"

Clearly then, the inconsistency in Sections 19 and 18 of the Anti-Money Laundering Law of 2001 is directly traceable to Sections 15 and 14 of Senate Bill No. 1745. The root word of "Senate", by the way, is the latin senex, meaning old man. Thence also another word, senile.

So how is this inconsistency, which is part of our heritage, to be resolved? It appears that the Ant-Money Laundering Council is taking the standard lawyerly position, a reply that is mouthed even by freshmen law students: When two provisions of law are in conflict, the latter one prevails. Presumably, in the heat of debate and deliberations, one cannot reasonably expect the legislators to remember what they said before (after all, do they remember their campaign promises?), and, consequently, their later utterance should be the binding rule.

The Anti-Money Laundering Council last week sent its implementing rules and regulations to Congress. Let us hope that our legislators, represented by the members of the Congressional Oversight Committee, would deign not to exercise the power, they reserved for themselves, to revise the regulations.

Regardless of how significant or insignificant their revisions are, the mere exercise of that dubious power would lead the international community to believe that our anti-money laundering system cannot be divorced from politics. Our country is suffering enough from the antics of our "honorables" in all the three branches of government. We do not need any further aggravation.

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