MANILA: The laundering through the Philippines of $81 million stolen by hackers from a US Federal Reserve account is adding to pressures on the Southeast Asian country to fix loopholes in its financial regime.

It also highlights a potential pitfall in global anti-money laundering efforts, which in the case of the Philippines has focused more on vanquishing terrorist financing than on preventing misuse of the financial system by banks and casinos.

The disclosure of the theft from an account of the Bangladesh central bank at the New York Fed, has given such issues fresh traction, with a front-runner for the May presidential election, Senator Grace Poe calling for a change to the Philippines’ stringent bank secrecy law.

“The trend now in the world is having bank disclosures, not bank secrecy,” Poe told reporters earlier this week. “This is to prevent also the funnelling of money down to terroristic activities, drug cartels, etc. We should be one with the international community in preventing such activities.”

Sergio Osmena III, chairman of the Philippine Senate’s committee on Banks, Financial Institutions and Currencies, said Thursday he is preparing to propose amendments to the anti-money laundering law. He wants gaming, and possibly real estate brokers and art dealers, to be subject to the money laundering law and wants bank secrecy laws to be relaxed.

“I know we’re going to have to weaken that now because we’re out of alignment with the rest of the world,” he told ABS-CBN television. “It’s very embarrassing to us, very embarrassing to our country.”

“We’re trying to establish ourselves as the money laundering capital ... I don’t think we want that to happen,” he said, calling the country’s casinos a money trail “black hole.”

The Philippines’ anti-money laundering agency says it has sought help from the Federal Bureau of Investigations in the case.

Bankers in the Philippines evidently knew something was amiss weeks before the Bangladesh Bank announced the theft.

On Thursday, the Philippine Senate held a second hearing into how the stolen funds were transmitted to four private accounts at a branch of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. and then sent to casino operators, who are not subject to the country’s anti-money laundering law.

During the televised hearing, Romualdo Agarrado, the bank branch’s customer service manager, testified that on Feb. 5, when the funds were transmitted to the accounts, he saw a bank messenger and another bank officer load 20m pesos ($428,000) in a paper bag into the car of the bank’s branch manager, Maia Santos-Deguito. He said she drove off with the money.

Officials allege the money was withdrawn from a bogus account set up under the name of a local businessman, William So Go, who denies any involvement in the transfers.

Agarrado also accused Deguito of offering him a 5m pesos ($107,000) bribe and of ignoring his Feb. 9 recommendation to heed an email from the bank’s head office ordering a recall of the funds.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2016