Due process, most sought-after refuge of scoundrels

THE APRIL 25 Inquirer editorial (“Return the money now”) raised a legitimate concern about the urgency of returning the money stolen from a poor country like Bangladesh as soon as possible. The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) is said to have filed civil forfeiture cases in court against persons and entities suspected of having still in their possession large portions of the loot. Now it’s all up to the court to say when the Bangladesh people will see the color of their own money!  The editorial somehow expressed a chimerical hope that such process will not turn out to be just another “occasion to display (to the whole world our country’s) brand of slow justice.”

A letter-writer took note earlier of that conundrum (“Due process, PH style,” Opinion, 4/23/16) and asked why there was still a need for the AMLC to formally file forfeiture cases with respect to funds already voluntarily surrendered to it (and now in the vaults of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for safekeeping) by a junket operator—precisely for the purpose of returning the same to the people of Bangladesh. Common sense tells us the AMLC should have had those funds delivered straight to the Bangladesh central bank. The Bangladesh officials attending the Senate hearings on that cyberheist could only shake their heads in utter bafflement. It’s money they could use yesterday to help ameliorate the miseries of their people.

The AMLC obviously wants to play safe by blindly going through a judicial rigmarole. Safe and free from what harm? From being sued by the junket operator concerned? How silly is that, indeed?  The AMLC was just a conduit, virtually an agent (if you will) of that operator when it accepted the funds from him for delivery to the Bangladesh central bank.

It’s election time in this country and the Bangladesh officials may now be crossing their fingers on where their money might end up!  This country is not exactly a stickler for the rules of propriety and decency when it comes to handling public funds. Just take a look at the Ombudsman’s list of incorrigible plunderers in our midst!

With respect to those unwilling to return what was stolen (still in the tens of millions in US dollars), freezing of bank accounts and action for forfeiture may be the only way to go. The upside is, most of those accounts are said to be under fictitious names, i.e., persons who, in legal and practical contemplation, do not exist!  For all intents and purposes, there is no one contesting the freezing of those accounts. And even if notice by publication is done to invite unknown parties to intervene in the proceedings in accordance with “due process,” who, aside from the Bangladesh government, is the AMLC expecting to show up and claim ownership of those funds and risk being thrown in jail?

Since it has already been established that the funds in those accounts emanated from the crime complained of, “summary proceedings” thereon, by their definition, should not drag on for months. Marathon hearings would show the world our justice system still works. And who says this cannot be done in less than one month with all the evidence already on hand? The editorial is a wake-up call to the judiciary that the rules on common decency trump all persnickety rules of procedure that often obscure and bedevil our system of “due process”—now, alas, egregiously  the most sought-after refuge of  scoundrels!

—STEPHEN L. MONSANTO, Monsanto Law Office, Loyola Heights, Quezon City, [email protected]