RCBC clears 6 execs of raps filed by AMLC

Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) has disputed the rec­ommendation of the Anti-Mon­ey Laundering Council (AMLC) to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to file criminal proceed­ings against six RCBC officials accused of failing to stop the laundering of $81 million stolen by cyber-criminals from Bangla­desh’s central bank last Febru­ary.

The electronic thieves shift­ed $81 million from the bank’s account with the US Federal Re­serve in New York to accounts in RCBC in one of the world’s big­gest bank heists.

In a statement, RCBC said it has yet to receive a copy of the AMLC complaints but that its own investigation did not show any culpability of its officials.

“Going by our independent internal investigation early this year, we believe that no head-of­fice official was involved in the transaction that was initiated and carried out by key people in our Jupiter Makati branch,” RCBC President and CEO Gil Buenaven­tura said.

Still, Buenaventura said the bank welcomes the charges “as an opportunity to conclusively prove that our executives acted properly and had no knowledge or partici­pation in any money laundering.”

“We are confident that the cases filed against these RCBC officers will be dismissed,” he added.

The stolen money was trans­ferred to four accounts at an RCBC branch from where it was funneled into local casinos, according to regulators who fined the bank a re­cord $21 million in August.

Charged in the the AMLC complaint-affidavit received by the DOJ were former Retail Banking Group head Raul Victor Tan, who resigned last April 20; National Sales Director of the Retail Banking Group Ismael Reyes; and Brigitte Capiña, director of the bank’sRetail Banking Group Regional Sales di­rector.

Also included in the charges were Nestor Pineda, district sales director; Romualdo Agarrado, customer service head, Jupiter Business Center; and Angela Ruth Torres, senior customer relations officer of the Jupiter Business Center.

Torres was terminated from her job after RCBC investigation showed that she and then-RCBC Jupiter Branch Manager Maia De­guito violated bank policies and procedures and falsified commer­cial documents that paved the way for the laundering of the Bangla­desh Bank funds.

The AMLC said it filed a crim­inal complaint at the DOJ against RCBC’s retail banking group head at the time, its national sales direc­tor and four other bank officials.

“The… respondent officers and employees of RCBC facilitat­ed the suspicious transactions in­volving the four accounts above, by failing to conduct the requisite investigations and enquiries into the accounts,” the complaint read.

The complaint also cited the respondents’ “deliberate refusal to know the unlawful origins of the funds.”

Justice department prosecu­tors will decide, based on evidence presented by the money-launder­ing watchdog, whether to file crimi­nal charges in court against the six.

The offense carries a maxi­mum prison term of seven years and fines of up to P3 million.

No one has been arrested for the heist but the government has recovered about $15 million, some of it from a Manila-based casino operator who has pledged to co­operate with the criminal inquiry. The recovered funds have been turned over to Bangladesh Bank.

The brazen cyber heist high­lighted banking loopholes that entice money launderers. An ex­ample cited was the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) policy that exempts casino transactions from scrutiny by the AMLC unless a case has been filed in court.

The complaint said AMLC in­vestigations showed that the six RCBC officers “facilitated the sus­picious transactions” that enabled the remittance of a total of $81 million to four US dollar accounts owned by Michael F. Cruz, Jessie Christopher M. Lagrosas, Alfred S. Vergara, and Enrico T. Vasquez last Feb. 4.

It said the respondents failed to “conduct the requisite investi­gations and inquiries into the ac­counts, their beneficiaries, and the transactions, attributable to their knowledge about the unlawful or­igins of the funds or their deliberate refusal to know the unlawful origins of the funds.”

The complaint said the six cur­rent and former RCBC officials did, in one way or another, acts that are in violation of the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA).

It cited that “knowledge, as an element of money laundering, may not necessarily be attribut­able to the doer of the predicate crime, but may be ascribed to persons who commit any of the acts stated in Section 4(a) to (f), as is plain from the statute, which does not identify the doer of a money laundering offense.”

It said Agarrado and Tor­res “failed to observe the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) rule required under AMLA while Tan, Reyes, Capiña, and Pineda failed to conduct Enhanced Due Dili­gence (EDD) in dealing with the accounts.

”The evidence and circum­stances therefore show that re­spondents recognized the certain­ty or likelihood that the accounts and transactions were involved in illegal activities, or at least sus­pected this. Despite this, respon­dents were deliberately remiss in their anti-money laundering obliga­tions,” it added. LUIS LEONCIO