{"id":12160,"date":"2020-11-26T21:17:32","date_gmt":"2020-11-26T21:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=12160"},"modified":"2026-04-23T23:43:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:43:43","slug":"philippines-passes-money-laundering-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/philippines-passes-money-laundering-amendment","title":{"rendered":"Philippines passes money laundering amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Single cash transactions exceeding US$103,999 in casinos will be labelled as \u201csuspicious\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Philippines.- The House of Representatives has passed a new amendment to the Philippines’ anti-money laundering laws which will impact on transactions made in casinos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The amendment places casino operators along with precious metals dealers and real estate brokers and developers under the scope of Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It states that large single cash transactions will be labelled as suspicious. In the case of casinos, this will apply to all individual transactions exceeding Php 5m(US$103,999).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main goal of the change is to avoid being grey-listed by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which had given the Philippines until February 2021 to make the changes to its anti-money laundering legislation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Rodrigo Duterte certified the proposed amendment as urgent, and it was approved by legislators at its second reading on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essentially, the amendment strengthens the AMLA by allowing the enforcement of financial sanctions, facilitating prosecutions of money laundering activities overseas, including tax crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 2021 the FATF is due to make a decision on whether the Philippines will be grey-listed. The country has been on the FATF blacklist once before, from 2000 to 2005. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the consequences is the exposure to sanctions from foreign governments and a higher cost of operations for Filipino businesses overseas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Singapore Casino Regulatory Authority (CRA) is also considering the possibility of introducing stricter controls<\/a><\/em><\/strong> for casino transactions, although its standards are already higher than those demanded by the FATF. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Single cash transactions exceeding US$103,999 in casinos will be labelled as \u201csuspicious\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"The Philippines' House of Representatives has passed an amendment to its Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA), designating single cash transactions exceeding US$103,999 (Php 5m) in casinos as \"suspicious.\" This legislative update aims to prevent the Philippines from being grey-listed by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a status that could lead to international sanctions and increased operational costs for Filipino businesses. The amendment also brings precious metals dealers and real estate brokers under AMLA's purview.","focusai_entities":"Financial Action Task Force (FATF), House of Representatives, Rodrigo Duterte, Singapore Casino Regulatory Authority (CRA)","focusai_location":"Philippines, Singapore","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.95), regulator (0.98), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (1.0), tech_data (0.85), payments_fraud_aml (1.0), investor_analyst (0.95), supplier_vendor (0.75), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"FATF Grey-listing Impact?","query":"What specific financial sanctions and increased operational costs are anticipated for Filipino businesses, particularly iGaming operators, if the Philippines is grey-listed by the FATF in June 2021?"},{"label":"Operational Compliance Challenges?","query":"How will the new Php 5m suspicious transaction threshold impact the operational efficiency, player experience, and compliance technology requirements for land-based and online casino operators in the Philippines?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,158,16333],"tags":[225,128],"class_list":["post-12160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legislation-news","category-slider-home","category-south-east-asia-news","tag-legislation","tag-philippines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12160"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12164,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12160\/revisions\/12164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}