Law benders’ caper

When the law says a record is secret, it should stay secret and should not be bent for the powerful.

Under the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA), the reports held by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) are meant to stay out of public view. The system works only if banks can trust that what they hand over will not end up on primetime TV news.

Those who take Vice President Sara Duterte’s side in the impeachment trial say this confidentiality is absolute, with no exceptions. The point deserves a hard look: if they are right, the Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, may have crossed a line.

Start with what Congress wrote and what it left out. The Bank Secrecy Law carries a list of exceptions, and an impeachment is on that list. When lawmakers later passed the AMLA, they had that example in front of them and could have copied it. They did not.

The other side has an answer, and it should be heard. The presiding officer reportedly said that Section 8-A of the AMLA protects against unauthorized leaks but does not block disclosures made in the official course of Senate proceedings. On its face, that is fair, since a court order itself is not a leak.

But it treats “official” as if it means “allowed.” Officials can do something and still be forbidden. The law also makes those responsible for a leak criminally liable. Even the use of leaked documents, including putting them out as news, is a criminal act.

Philippine Ambassador to the Court of St. James Teddy Boy Locsin, who helped craft the AMLA, said legislators foresaw the law being used for political persecution and built in safeguards. Section 9 bars communicating a suspicious transaction report, its contents, or information derived from it to any person or the media. “The media gets special mention,” he said. It is criminal to publish or air even the fact that a report was made, what more the contents of an account.

The harm is not small. The AMLC gave the House a figure of P6.7 billion in transactions for the Vice President and her husband, lawyer Manases Carpio. It sounded like a fortune, but critics say it was only the money moving in and out of the accounts, which differs from what the couple actually owns.

A raw report is a tip, not a finding. It comes from a bank that has no personal knowledge of the deal, and it can be wrong, thin, or plainly misleading. The proper path, as the defense sees it, runs from investigation to verification to a complaint before the Ombudsman or the DoJ, and only then to open court.

The Senate may say that an impeachment trial is not a criminal case and that the public has a stake. That is true. Voters have a right to know whether the second-highest official in the land is clean, but that right is not a license to see every file. The court could have asked the AMLC to verify the entries and testify to its findings, or taken the records in closed session.

Today the subject is a Vice President. Tomorrow it could be a businessperson, a judge, or a rival of whoever holds power. A businessman who learns that his bank reports can be read aloud in a public hearing will think twice before he uses the banking system at all. The AMLA was built to catch launderers, not to frighten honest depositors.

None of this means the Vice President should be shielded. If there is dirty money, let it be traced, proven, and punished. The point is the road, not the destination. A conviction built on records shown in a way the law forbids will be questioned for years.

A court that asks others to follow the law should itself follow it first. The people watching are not only judging the Vice President but are also judging the Senate judges.