Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said he has already ordered his staff to study the possible criminal liability of members of the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) for obstruction of justice.
Aguirre said AMLC has been sitting for 22 months on the request of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to look into bank accounts and paper trail of transactions from inside the New Bilibid Prison (NBP).
He said after the December 2014 raid at NBP by government agents and then Secretary of Justice, now Senator Leila De Lima, the NBI already made the request for assistance.
President Rodrigo Duterte, during the NBI anniversary, warned AMLC members to cooperate with the DOJ’s investigation on bank transactions involving proceeds from drug trafficking.
Aguirre, however, said after Duterte’s warning, AMLC has sent them a set of bank documents “that is useless.”
“I ordered a study if there could be a complaint to be filed [against AMLC] because I believe that there is already criminal negligence on the part of some people,” Aguirre said.
Earlier, he hinted that the AMLC could be protecting somebody.
Aguirre said two ranking officials of AMLC are fraternity brothers of De Lima.
“Two from AMLC, the second in command to the Executive Director and its Chief Investigator are her fraternity brothers from Lambda Rho,” Aguirre said.
Some of the accounts that the Department of Justice (DOJ) wants investigated are supposedly linked to De Lima who was accused of benefitting from drug transactions inside Bilibid.