by MALOU MANGAHAS
UNLESS THE Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) moves faster than usual, the clan implicated in the Nov. 23, 2009 Maguindanao Massacre might soon retake control of what by all accounts is a scandalously vast estate of money and mansions, and wheels and weapons it had acquired while governing over a dirt-poor province.
Next week, on Dec. 2, a freeze order on 597 bank accounts, 142 firearms, 132 motor vehicles, and 113 houses and lots, recorded in the names of 27 Ampatuan family members and their associates, will lapse.
The bank accounts alone are estimated to be worth more than a billion pesos – multiple times more money than what the Ampatuans who held elective office had declared in their asset disclosure records to be their lawful incomes and net worth.
The AMLC – which is unduly secretive in the country but quite open about its operations in international forums and toward donor agencies – is mum about what it plans to do next.
Unfortunately, it barely inspires confidence, if the last two years since the massacre are any reference.
Indeed, by most indications, the AMLC and monetary and banking officials, along with the banks, have taken largely a series of administrative half-steps and missteps against the Ampatuans, who until the massacre that killed 58 people, including 32 media workers, were the lords of Maguindanao.
In truth, the story of how the Ampatuans managed to move massive amounts of money to and from hundreds of bank accounts is also the story of why regulatory agencies failed to enforce banking laws vis-à-vis the banks.