Amid the damning evidence being uncovered in the multi-billion flood control scandal, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has started its probe on big amount of cash flows in the financial system.
This follows its early action on limiting the cash withdrawal from banks for a single account to P500,000 daily, helping check money laundering.
“This flood control scandal was as much of a shock to us as it was to you. But we’re working hard to fix things,” BSP Governor Eli M. Remolona Jr. said in an interview on One News’ Money Talks aired Friday.
“We’re making a lot of inquiries. We’re trying to identify the big flows of cash throughout the financial systems, the unusually large flows of cash. But not just cash, any financial transaction that looks unusual,” he added.
Remolona said that so far, most of the transactions were through government-owned financial institutions.
“I think more from the government financial institutions. And that makes sense because it’s government money so it will go through government financial institutions. So that’s what we’ve seen so far,” Remolona said.
“The amounts involved. We had no idea. I think you and I, we knew there was corruption all along, right? But not on this scale. And the site of the piles of cash on a table. That’s kind of shocking. I didn’t know this was all done in cash and in such amounts. So that is shocking,” he added.
As part of its efforts to reduce money laundering and other risks linked to the use of cash, the BSP earlier issued a circular limiting the value of large cash transactions to P500,000 per banking day.
Under Circular No. 1218 series of 2025 issued Sept. 18, large value transactions above P500,000 or its equivalent in foreign currency must be conducted through traceable channels such as checks, online fund transfers, direct credit to deposit accounts, or digital payments.
The same limit applies to cash transactions in equivalent foreign currencies.
“We want to make it more difficult for the contractors, for the guys involved in this flood control mess to be able to take money out of the banks,” Remolona said.
PNA PHOTO