JCM: The beautiful lives, reputation, and esteem that electronically stolen US$81-million & money laundering scheme ruin promise hope

Monday, April 4, 2016

The beautiful lives, reputation, and esteem that electronically stolen US$81-million & money laundering scheme ruin promise hope

Christ's disciples have "put on the new man, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."( Eph 4:24) By "putting away falsehood," they are to "put away all malice and all guile and insincerity and envy and all slander." (Ephesians 4:25; 1 Peter 2:1) - Catechism of the Catholic Church CCC 2475

Maia Santos-Deguito (RCBC Branch Manager, Jupiter Makati) and Angela Torres, RCBC Senior Customer Relationship Officer (SCRO) lose their jobs and face traumatic circumstances in their lives brought criminal complaints for violations of the Anti-Money Laundering Act[1] (not to mention the worldwide appearances of her personality in different media), which I empathize most because I know how it feels to be deprived by justice while losing source of income – everything is repressed from basic family needs, simple amusement, up to community involvement.

Deguito asserted that all her transactions with clients were authentic, and that the deposit of money into the questioned accounts were known to the RCBC's higher-ups, telling that most of the money in these accounts have allegedly been converted into pesos and funneled to the bank accounts of Solaire and Eastern Hawaiian casinos. The Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) does not cover casinos, that’s why it is not certain what happened to the $81 million,[2] although recently the camp of businessman Kam Sin “Kim” Wong on Thursday handed over to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) the $4.6 million he volunteered to return to the Bangladesh government, supposedly after discovering that the money was part of the $81-million money laundering scheme.[3]

As a consequence of handling the money transfers totaling $81 million, PhilRem may be held accountable for failing to exercise the Know Your Customer Rule (KYC) rule to scrutinize the source and recipient of the funds, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

Presented below are individual explanations of the people involved in this alleged money laundering issue:

People in question concerning $81-million stolen from the Bangladesh Central Bank’s account with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank in New York, moved from the latter to RCBC accounts
Maia Santos-Deguito RCBC Branch Manager, Jupiter Makati	Angela Torres RCBC Senior Customer Relationship Officer (SCRO)	Romualdo Agarrado RCBC Jupiter Branch Customer Service Head	PhilRem Service Corp. Salud Bautista President Michael "Concon" Bautista, Treasurer

In the executive session requested by her, it was discussed that Concon Bautista (PhilRem’s Treasures was supposedly an acquaintance with former RCBC Securities President Jerome Tan. According to the report: Tan drowned during a yachting trip in 2012, with Bautista supposedly among those with Tan during the drowning incident. Claimed that she's being used as a scapegoat in the $81-million money laundering scandal, pointing to a friend of RCBC President Lorenzo Tan as the person at the center of the controversy. She added that she was upset with Tan and the RCBC management for implicating her in the money laundering scandal, insisting she did not benefit from the transaction. She also claimed that the four accounts, which originally received the money from New York, were referred to RCBC by a certain Kim Wong – a friend of bank President and CEO Lorenzo V. Tan. During the open hearing, she said that Wong had referred all the accounts - whose holders were found to be fictitious - to hold the $81 million before the funds were consolidated into the account of businessman William Go, and laundered in casinos. She said Wong was a valued client of the bank being a close friend of RCBC president and CEO Lorenzo Tan. She claimed that she met Wong through car dealer Jason Go when she was still with East West Bank. In an exclusive interview with ABS-CBN News, she claimed that RCBC president and CEO Lorenzo Tan knew about the illegal transaction involving a man named Kim Wong. She alleged that Wong then referred to her "four persons who opened on May 2015 the other bank accounts linked to the scam: Michael Francisco Cruz, Jessie Christopher Lagrosas, Alfred Santos Vergara and Enrico Teodoro Vasquez." Deguito said that she met the five individuals in Solaire Hotel, as part of her marketing function that requires to go out of the office as Branch Manager. She claimed that these five individuals were referred to her in Solaire where she facilitated the forms which they accomplished and submitted to her with all the supporting documents. When asked why she agreed to meet the men at Solaire and not at their bank, she replied that Kim Wong is a known close friend of the president of the bank (Lorenzo Tan). People like that are entitled to special accomodation. She also told that that the wire transfer of the illegal funds first passed the RCBC main office before it reached the accounts in the Jupiter branch. She said she even questioned their head office about the sudden remittance of the huge amount but the RCBC Settlements Division, however, allegedly did not raise red flags on the transfer. Based on the before senators in a closed-door hearing last Thursday, she said it was Wong who “referred” Philrem to her.	She claimed that Go was able to withdraw P20 million from the peso account which she and bank messenger, Jovy Morales, loaded into his Lexus car outside the Jupiter branch on February 5. In an interview with radio dzBB, she said that she was the one who brought the money to William Go and firmed to herself that it was William Go who received it. In an interview over dzMM TeleRadyo, she insisted that she saw Go and that he signed the withdrawal slip himself. It’s true that it was William Go who received the money and signed, she said, adding that Go was in a Lexus SUV and that she was familiar with Go because he had withdrawn money from the branch before. William Go rolled down his windshield. He was there in the passenger’s seat, and she knew him, she said. She said that she has since resigned from RCBC after allegedly being grilled by bank auditors, officers and lawyers. She insisted that Deguito, who was in an executive session with senators on Thursday afternoon, did nothing wrong.	Pinned Deguito that she was aware of all the transactions regarding the Bangladesh Bank's funds. He quoted Deguito as having said that she would rather do this than her being killed or her family. He claimed that the latter ignored bank protocols and a request to stop the release of millions of dollars to local bank accounts as she feared for her life. The money was supposedly moved from New York to RCBC accounts under the names Michael F. Cruz, Jessie C. Lagrosas, Alfred S. Vergara, and Enrico T. Vasquez. At the resumption of the Senate's investigation, he said that he saw the money loaded into Deguito's vehicle, which was parked in front of the bank. He narrated that on February 5 - the day when RCBC said $22 million was put into the Go account - Deguito's assistant, Angela Torres, requested P20 million from the bank's cash center, which was delivered by armored car. He said that the teller then put the money in a box, which was brought to Deguito's office. He added that the branch messenger, a certain Jovy Morales, then looked for a paper bag to put the money in and then brought it to the branch manager's car, asserting that he personally saw it because he was sitting in the table facing the door of the branch. Alleged that he saw Deguito load the money into her car and drive off with it. He testified at the resumption of the Senate blue ribbon committee hearing that a P20 million cash believed to be part of the $81-million stolen funds was allegedly loaded to the vehicle of Maia Santos-Deguito, He said he personally saw the P20 million cash placed in a paper bag being loaded to the car of Deguito last February 5 when the inward remittance in the name of businessman William Go came in. He stated that in the afternoon of February 5, the branch’s assistant manager, Angela Torres, requested P20 million from the cash center. After which at around 5:30 in the afternoon, the armor car arrived from the cash center for their counting, and that it was the P20 million requested from the cash center, he said. He said that together with Torres they immediately transferred the money to the teller. He said that between 6:30 [and] 6:45 p.m., the teller placed the money in a box, counted it and put the cash in branch manager Maia Deguito’s room. That time BM Maia was outside the branch and allegedly talked to somebody on the cellphone, he added. He said Jovy Morales, the bank messenger, then transferred the money from the box to a paper bag before loading it to Deguito’s vehicle with the help of Torres. He said that Jovy Morales loaded [the money] to the vehicle of manager Maia Deguito, assisted by Angela Torres. He asserted that he could clearly see it because he was sitting on the table fronting the main door of the branch, which was made of glass so it could be clearly seen outside, even though it was 6:30 or quarter to 7:00 p.m. already, the lighting was clear inside the branch. Personally, he saw it, he added.	Philrem is engaged in the business of remittance of money currency from abroad to be delivered to the different parts of the Philippines." The currency remittance firm has emerged as a conduit in moving the money from the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. branch on Jupiter Makati to the casinos – where the stolen money was supposedly laundered – and other benefactors that included junket operators. Michael belied Wong’s allegation that the $17 million is with them, he told the committee. Bautista claimed that her company relied on the RCBC compliance to Know Your Customer (KYC). From transactions involving the stolen Bangladesh funds, PhilRem earned P10.4 million in handling fees, and confirmed before the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee that it was responsible for transferring $81 million from RCBC to the various recipients. But the company claimed it was not aware that the transactions involved illicit funds in a money laundering scheme, that their office was called for this transaction by RCBC Jupiter branch manager Maia Santos-Deguito. In one of the Senate hearings, Bautista told the panel that Philrem was willing to hand over the proceeds totaling P10,474,654 to Bangladesh. She said the amount was equivalent to one-fourth of 1 percent of the total amount. Bautista testified before the committee that PhilRem transferred the $81 million to casino junket operator WeiKang Xu, in several tranches from February 5 to 13, 2016 and in the presence of Kam Sin "Kim" Wong – another junket operator and a longtime Philippine resident, and that all the deliveries were documented. “I would like to deny the $17 million is with us,” Concon told the Senate blue ribbon committee in response to deny Wong’s claim. At the same hearing, Philrem pledged to return more than P10 million to the Bangladeshi government. The money consisted of hanlding fees the remmitance firm earned from the transactions involving the $81 million. “We will prepare a check as soon as the Bangladeshi delegation will confirm who the payee will be. That check will represent every centavo our company earned from the series of transactions,” Philrem President Salud Bautista said. The check is “not only... an apology but... a symbol of a Filipino company willing to find justice. We computed we will be returning P10,474.654,” according to the Philrem executive. Bautista has testified that they received instructions from Deguito on how much to exchange in pesos and to withdraw in dollars, and to whom the funds would be delivered.

Alleged Perpetrators of the Money Laundering Scheme
Kam Sin “Kim” Wong Businessman Junket Operator	William Go	Lorenzo V. Tan RCBC President & CEO

Denied Bautista’s claim and alleged that some $17 million still remains with PhilRem. He also claimed before committee the amounts disbursed by PhilRem involving the Bangladesh funds: P1.365 billion went to Solaire Resort and Casino, P1 billion went to Midas Hotel and Casino, P100 million delivered personally by Deguito and Michael "Concon" Bautista (Salud's husband and PhilRem's treasurer), P300 million and $5 million he personally fetched from the Bautista residence "In sum, the figures total around $64 billion."Seventeen million dollars is with Concon," Wong alleged. His camp handed over to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) the $4.6 million he volunteered to return to the Bangladesh government, supposedly after discovering that the money was part of the $81-million money laundering scheme. Wong earlier claimed that he accepted the money as debt payment and investment from a couple of big time rollers, not knowing it was part of the funds stolen from the account of the Bangladesh Bank with the US Federal Reserve. He is a casino junket operator. During the Senate blue ribbon committee hearing on Tuesday, March 29, Wong said he was willing to return what's left of the money given to him. He also detailed the supposed breakdown of the stolen $81 million, claiming that P1.365 billion went to Solaire Resort and Casino and P1 billion went to Midas Hotel and Casino. He also said that he received P100 million which was personally delivered to him by sacked Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) Jupiter branch manager Maia Santos-Deguito, and Philrem Service Corp. Treasurer Michael “Concon” Bautista. There was also some P300 million and $5 million he personally fetched from the Bautista residence. All of which total around $64 million. The remaining $17 million, Wong claimed, is still with Philrem.	Some $66 million of the Bangladesh fund was then withdrawn and consolidated in another account under the name William So Go – businessman who signed a waiver on bank secrecy law for RCBC accounts under his name. However, he claimed that accounts did not actually belong to him. This was echoed by RCBC Legal and Regulatory Affairs Head Maria Cecilia Fernandez-Estavillo, who claimed before the committee that the supposed accounts were fictitious. She also alleged that Deguito forged Go's signature in withdrawal slips and drove away with P20 million from the questionable peso account. The $66 million from the Go account was then supposedly converted into pesos and transferred to casino junket operator WeiKang Xu via the remittance firm Philrem Service Corp. Some $15 million also eventually went through Philrem, Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) Executive Director Julia Bacay-Abad to the committee. He filed criminal complaints against Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) bank manager Maia Santos-Deguito and senior customer relationship officer Angela Torres for dragging him into this scam. The complaints filed before the Makati Prosecutor's Office accuse Deguito and Torres of committing falsification of commercial documents, which is punishable under Article 172 of the Revised Penal Code. He said that all of their statements were lies, telling that he has not involved in this scam since the beginning. The signatures of the bank accounts are fake, he added in a report of Mark Zambrano on “24 Oras.” They approved the fake withdrawal. They themselves were the ones who withdrew the P20 million, he said, adding that he does not go to RCBC because he has no transaction with the bank. Go, who has accused Deguito of opening his alleged fake account in RCBC, has also implicated Alan Peñalosa of EastWest, who reportedly tried to coerce him into owning up to the account. Go claimed that Deguito had admitted to him that she had opened the account herself and offered P10 million if he would go along with the scheme, allegations that Deguito denied. He claimed that his signature was forged in opening one of the questioned bank accounts. Accused Deguito of attempting to bribe him to close the account after RCBC started its independent probe on the issue. Before the hearing, he signed a waiver of bank secrecy while maintaining that the account is not his.	Denied Deguito's claim, saying he saw Wong on rare occasions over the past 12 years. Admitted meeting Wong in 2002 but added that he has not met him more than ten years. He said he knew Wong as a restaurant-owner. He said that he does not know (Maia Santos-Deguito) personally, which raises the question: ‘How can a branch manager work with a bank president who does not know her on branch level matters? As president of RCBC, I do not engage myself in the opening of accounts, knowing the client and his source of income among other things as required by government rules, and crediting and debiting funds." He added, "The branch manager oversees these things. I did not refer anyone to her for the opening of accounts even. I did not handpick Ms. Deguito. She was recommended by a friend, which is normally done everywhere. She went through the same vetting process before she was hired in late 2013. If I did not know her personally, how can I provide her guidance on how to answer a memo from management asking her to explain everything that is now coming out in the media in a level of detail that I could not have been familiar with as CEO?" Denied his branch manager’s claim, saying there is a vetting process for personnel in which he is not involved. He said that branch managers are five layers below him

BLUE RIBBON SENATE COMMITTEE INVESTIGATION The Senate conducted the investigation after Dhaka sought the help of Philippine authorities to recover the funds stolen from its offshore account. The Bangladesh central bank keeps the current account at the New York Fed to settle its international transactions.

Ralph Recto Senate President Pro-Tempore	Serge Osmeña Senator, The chairman of the Senate Committee on Banks, Financial Institutions and Currencies		Teofisto Guingona III Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Accountability of Public Officers & Investigations
At the start of her two-hour executive session with senators, Deguito broke down and – after recovering her composure – tagged Wong and top RCBC officials as the ones more deeply involved in the irregularity. He also said Deguito seemed to be a plausible witness and that the session with her established the culpability of other people, specifically Wong. He said that he looked at (Deguito’s) manner and she seems to be a believable witness, but he can’t conclude yet that she’s not guilty. It’s difficult to say that no one in the bank knew because there is clearly human intervention, considering the huge amount of money involved. “It is hard to believe Go was not involved. He is very familiar with that RCBC branch. It was very early in the day that RCBC cleared him,” Recto said. Aside from establishing the culpability of the crime, Recto said the Senate wants the remaining stolen funds in the accounts of Solaire Resorts and Casino and Eastern Hawaii – at least $2 million is left in Solaire alone – to be returned to the government of Bangladesh. According to gaming regulator Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., Solaire received $29 million and Eastern Hawaii received $21 million but initial investigation shows that only $2 million is left in the Solaire account. He also said the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) should file a case against Philrem and RCBC for possible negligence in preventing the crime and not just against Deguito. Likewise, AMLC failed to monitor the suspicious activity and should also be made to explain, he said.	He said that he wouldn't say least guilty but [Deguito's] not the most guilty. There’s an orchestrator, a mastermind here. And right now it’s looking like its Kim Wong. He and Senator Teofisto Guingona III believe Deguito could not have facilitated alone the fund transfers involving the stolen funds, according to her story, but they still have to vet it with other testimonies. "She is highly credible. I would tend to believe 80-90 percent of what she said, the other 10 percent, we still have to check out," he said. He said that "it looks like" the account belongs to Allan Peñalosa, East West Bank branch head in Burgos Circle, Taguig. "Peñalosa has his own private business where he would discount the checks that are given to Centurytex (Trading), which is the company of Mr. Go," Osmeña said. The money-laundering trail ended at the casinos. “It’s very hard to trace the funds and recover them,” he said. “At this point, we have no proof that Philrem was in on the money laundering scheme,” nor is there showing that Go “is a major character” in the controversy, he said. Aside from Solaire, there were reports that part of the funds founds its way to two other casinos – City of Dreams and Midas Hotel and Casino. Osmeña said Weikang Xu, to whom Bautista claimed they had delivered P600 million and $18 million in cash at Solaire between Feb. 5 and 13, “is not a junket operator but a mere gambler. We are now looking for this guy,” he said. Osmeña said these accounts were opened in May 2015 and remained unused until February 5, 2016 when a payment of $20 million each entered the accounts. The senator pointed out that under the Anti-Money Laundering Law, bank managers should immediately flag down a customer's account if an unexplained huge amount -- from P500,000 and up -- enters it. This is very suspicious. This should have stopped immediately by the bank manager. Why did she allow it, he said. He told that, they’ll establish the facts. The money came from the account of Bangladeshi government from New York with three banks - Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of New York. They’ll trace how it slipped through. They’’ll trace who are these four depositors that opened dollar account, $500 each on May 2015 which turned out to be dormant, then all of sudden $20 million to each of the account were deposited, so it appeared that it’s well planned, he said.	“Deguito’s story is closer to the truth. We believe most of the things she told us. She came across rather well,” Osmeña said. He said the Deguito’s statements jibed with the facts the Senate and the AMLC have already found out. “She told us that she opened five accounts in May 2015, that the depositors were referred to her by businessman Kim Wong, that they met at the Midas Hotel and Casino, that Kim Wong gave her $2,500 to open the accounts with $500 each, that she verified the identities of the depositors with the identification cards given to her,” he said. It was the first time Deguito claimed that Wong referred to her the five depositors. She has alleged that RCBC president Lorenzo Tan asked her to “take care” of Wong in a birthday party they attended in 2010, an allegation Tan denied. Not a single transaction was made in the five accounts until last February 5, when $81 million stolen by alleged Chinese hackers from the Bangladesh central bank found its way to four of them. Osmeña revealed, based on Deguito’s testimony in the closed-door hearing, that on February 5, Wong called her to inquire if one of the four accounts had already received $30 million. “After verifying, she told him that the funds were already there. He called every 20 minutes to ask if the other remittances had arrived – $20 million, $25 million and $6 million, for a total of $81 million. True enough, the funds were transmitted to the four accounts. The fifth – opened by a certain Picache – did not receive any funds. Kim Wong is a major player in this scandal,” he said. Wong is reportedly a casino junket operator, one who recruits high-stakes gamblers from abroad and flies them to the country. He also gathers Filipino gamblers and flies them to casinos abroad. He acknowledged that the statements of Deguito and Jupiter branch officers Angela Torres and Romualdo Agarrado on the P20 million withdrawn from the account Go claimed was not his were contradictory. Go has denied receiving the money. “But we will be the ones to determine who is telling the truth and who is lying, not RCBC officers,” he said. He said one Deguito statement they doubted was her claim that it was Tan himself who recruited her. “She was recruited by bank officers but not by the bank president himself,” he said.	Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) Jupiter branch manager Maia Santos-Deguito named two senior bank executives who could be part of the $81-million Bangladesh bank heist during the Senate hearing on Thursday, he said. “It seems like there are bigger people involved,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the hearing. He declined to elaborate, but noted that Deguito named two executives of RCBC who may have had a hand in the transactions. Asked about the proceedings, Guingona noted the investigation was “still a long way, that it’s a long trail from New York. Two officials of RCBC (were named)... Senior executives,” the committee chairman said, without going into details. “Look at what happened with the $81 million. You make it past Fed, that’s a very large syndicate... This is the first time about stolen money wherein the victim cries,he added. It seems she was just used and that there is really a prime mover in all this. He is here in the Philippines," said Guingona, the chairman of the blue ribbon panel. He said that during the executive session Deguito identified two RCBC executives who may have had a hand in the transactions. He did not disclose their names.