Pagcor to monitor suspicious transactions

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (Pagcor) will come out with a set of  rules  to monitor   suspicious transactions even  after casinos  have been excluded from the coverage  of the   recently amended Anti-Money Laundering  Act  (AMLA).

Pagcor  vice president  for gaming and licensing development Francis Hernando  said   the state-gaming  firm has  started  drafting  the rules that could be implemented starting September  this year.

“There will be a set of rules.  We’re actually developing a set of rules in time for the opening of Solaire,” Hernando told Senate reporters, referring to  Bloomberry’s Solaire Manila Resorts and Casio, one of four  license  holders of Pagcor’s Entertainment City  project.

“Our casino regulations and part of those casino regulations will touch on monitoring transactions  that may be deemed to be say suspicious under the AMLA,’  he said.

A proposal requiring    casinos to report suspicious  transactions was  rejected  by   Congress when it approved early this  month a bill  that seeks to strengthen the  AMLA.

Despite this, Hernando said Pagcor would police its own to strengthen its regulatory  power and  be at par with  international standards.

“I think if we want to be international class and recognized worldwide, we have to police ourselves properly,”  he said.

“We’d like to hopefully be recognized as a serious jurisdiction internationally. The way Macau and Singapore and Las Vegas, New Jersey, Australia do it, there is a formal set of rules that is applied to everybody for a level playing field,” said Hernando.

“The rules are predictable, there are set sanctions for certain infractions and we’ve all put this and codified these into a manual. And that manual that’s under development. The first draft has already been approved by our board and we’re hoping that the formal form will be finished by September,” Hernando added.