Compliance officer convicted for failure to maintain records in Bangladesh Bank heist

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday announced that it has secured the conviction of a compliance officer of the Philrem Service Corporation (Philrem) for failure to maintain records in connection to the heist of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank in 2016.

“This conviction is a first in Philippine law where a compliance officer violated the mandatory records keeping of a covered institution,” the DOJ said in a statement.

Under the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2001, the DOJ said covered institutions must maintain client records for at least five years and report covered or suspicious transactions to the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC).

“The law does not provide for any exception relieving covered institutions of their obligation to maintain and store records on the ground that such information may be available with other banks or financial institutions,” the DOJ said.

“Philrem’s failure to maintain customer identification records constitutes a clear violation of law,” it added.

According to the DOJ, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) received a request in 2016 from the Governor of Bangladesh to probe the unauthorized payment of $81 million to the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC).

The DOJ said the investigation showed that $80 million was deposited into the RCBC bank account of William So Go, doing business under Centurytex Trading.

It added that Go made fund transfers to Philrem's RCBC bank account, and then Philrem transferred funds to Bloomberry Resorts and Hotels Inc., Eastern Hawaii Leisure Company, and Wei Kang Xu.

According to the DOJ, the accused is a compliance officer of Philrem, a remittance agent registered with the BSP, and is covered by the law.

“As a compliance officer, Pelejo failed to keep records as mandated by law,” it said.— AOL, GMA News