Maia Santos-Deguito, manager of Rizal Commercial Banking
Corporation's (RCBC) Jupiter Street branch in Makati City of the
Philippines is feeling the heat of the allegation of laundering $81
million stolen from the US account of Bangladesh Bank.
The branch has been at the centre of attention since the case, the biggest in the banking history, became public last week.
Deguito is being investigated by the RCBC head office for alleged
violations of the bank's money-laundering and terror
financing-prevention programme manual, and for falsification of deposit
account opening and other offences listed by RCBC's human resources
group in a show-cause memorandum dated March 2.
What is more, Deguito was offloaded from a Philippine Airlines flight
heading for Tokyo on Friday, after the Southeast Asian country's
Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) treating her as “part of the
money-laundering scheme”.
She was barred from leaving the country ahead of a Senate
investigation into her alleged involvement in the cross-border
remittance transaction.
A photo published yesterday on the Inquirer, the news site that broke
the story, showed she was walking in Ninoy Aquino International Airport
after being offloaded from the plane.
The news outlet said Deguito not knowing that she was on the lookout
list of the Bureau of Immigration, had tried to leave the Philippines.
She was already aboard Philippine Airlines Flight 432 with her
husband and son when immigration officials came aboard and took them off
the plane.
David de Castro, spokesperson for the Manila International Airport
Authority, said they were “off-loaded” on orders from the immigration
bureau.
Nikki Reyes, spokesperson for the immigration bureau, said Deguito
had been included in the immigration lookout list on orders of the
Department of Justice.
A source told the Inquirer that Senator Serge Osmeña III, who is
leading a Senate investigation into the alleged laundering, had asked
the justice department to stop Deguito from leaving the country.
RCBC lawyers had asked Osmeña to intervene and keep Deguito in the country, the source said.
Deguito, at whose bank branch the $81 million was transferred by
unknown computer hackers from the BB's account in the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York, is under investigation by the RCBC management.
The AMLC of the Philippines and the National Bureau of Investigation
(NBI) are looking into the operation to launder the stolen money through
the Philippine financial system.
The Senate committee will open its own investigation on Tuesday.
No charges have been brought against Deguito, but she said in a radio
interview on Friday that immigration officers showed her a fax from the
AMLC stating that she was “part of the money-laundering scheme”.
“[It means] they should not allow me to escape from the law. But I'm not really escaping from anything,” Deguito said.
She said she had been receiving death threats since reports of the
alleged money laundering broke, but she was just taking her son to
Disneyland in Tokyo as a birthday gift.
Deguito said the immigration officers showed her no subpoena. Neither
from the Senate that summoned her to next week's hearing, nor from a
court.
“[My lawyer] talked to the immigration officers, but they kept saying [they were just following orders],” she said.
She did not say where she and her family were taken, but an airport
source told the Inquirer that they were taken to the immigration
bureau's main office in Intramuros, Manila.
In the radio interview, Deguito also said she was “just a small person” to be blamed for the mess at RCBC.
“I'm just an employee. All I know is I never did anything wrong,” she said.
Asked if she was willing to be a state witness in the investigation, Deguito said she was afraid to do so.
“It's the same. It will be like I'm in prison,” she said. “What I
know is, I did not do anything wrong. I did not steal anything. I did
not get anything.”
Now it emerges that the branch manager as well as the head of the
bank apparently had the knowledge about the stealing of BB's money from
its account with the New York Fed.
Businessman William S Go, one of six people under investigation for
the alleged money laundering, said an affidavit submitted to the NBI
claims that Deguito had told him that two bogus accounts had been set up
at her branch to handle a large US dollar remittance coming from
Bangladesh. It said the money was converted into pesos with the approval
of the RCBC head office.
William Go denied being involved in the alleged money-laundering
operation, claiming that Deguito had forged his signature to open an
account in his name at the bank.
In a press conference on Friday, Go's lawyer Ramon Esguerra said the
accounts in his client's name at the RCBC Jupiter branch were bogus and
that Go's signatures were forged by the branch manager.
“Ms Santos [Deguito] admitted to me that she opened Centurytex's RCBC
accounts to facilitate the deposit of a substantial amount of US dollar
remittance allegedly coming from Bangladesh, which she later converted
to Philippine pesos. She said her actions were all cleared and allowed
by RCBC 'head office,'” Go said in a sworn statement that was
distributed to the media at the press briefing.
Esguerra said Go and Deguito had known each other before the latter joined the RCBC.
Deguito said she knew Go, but denied Go's allegations raised through
his lawyer Ramon Esguerra that she met with the businessman and asked
him to sign documents that would close his account at her branch.
Asked whether Go was lying, she said, “I will answer that in the Senate.”
Asked if RCBC president and CEO Lorenzo Tan knew about the alleged money laundering, she said she assumed he did.
“I'm not accusing him. I will just assume, because this is a huge
amount of money. It will be credited to the treasury of the bank before
it gets credited to our branch,” said Deguito.
Tan has denied knowledge of the scheme.
On Friday, Tan's lawyer Francis Lim said Tan had offered to go on
leave to give the bank a free hand in investigating the alleged money
laundering.
In an interview on Monday, lawyer Ferdie Topacio said his client,
Deguito, had told him that she received specific instructions directly
from RCBC CEO Tan to allow the transfer of $81 million into five
accounts in her branch.
In a press statement on Wednesday, however, Tan branded “malicious”
the “insinuations” that the RCBC top management had approved the
multimillion-dollar transfer into the Jupiter branch, which later turned
out to be part of an international money-laundering scheme.
Deguito said apart from the $81 million “plus” that was credited to
her branch, “there was a call [on February 9] from the settlement
department of the bank that there was an additional payment but they no
longer credited it (in the Jupiter branch accounts) because they
reportedly said there was a recall.”
“As to how much was that, I have no idea,” she said.
Deguito said the money that was credited to her branch “went through the process”.
“I was not the one who credited that straight. There is a department
at the head office that handles the remittance. So there's a long
process that needs to be followed before the money reaches my branch,”
she said.
Deguito said she instructed her assistant to e-mail the remittance
department for information about the source of the funds and what they
were intended for.
“They did not call me. [The money] was just credited in the account. And now it's all my fault,” she said.
Deguito acknowledged that Michael Francisco Cruz, Jessie Christopher
Lagrosas, Enrico Teodoro Vasquez, and Alfred Santos Vergara opened
accounts at her branch.
Deguito said she first met the holders of the subject accounts on
March 13, 2015, at Solaire Resort and Casino, claiming this was upon the
referral of a casino high-roller.
The accounts were allegedly used for receiving the funds from the
Bangladesh Bank that were to be transferred from its account in the New
York Fed.
The accounts were later consolidated into one of Go's accounts at
Deguito's branch and allegedly laundered through three casinos in
Manila, reported the Inquirer.
The immigration bureau's order to stop Deguito from leaving the
Philippines was a violation of constitutional and human rights, her
lawyer said yesterday.
“We condemn in the strongest terms possible the blatant violation of
the Constitutional and Human Rights of our client, Ms Maia
Santos-Deguito, perpetrated by the Department of Justice and the Bureau
of Immigration, in forcibly offloading her, her husband and 10-year-old
son from a plane at the last minute that it was about to leave for
Japan,” lawyer Ferdinand Topacio said in a statement.
“The heavy-handed manner by which the offloading was done, which
would not be out of place in a police state such as North Korea, has
traumatised not only Ms Santos-Deguito and her husband, but worse, her
child of tender years, who kept crying throughout the ordeal and even
all the way back home, as he could not, in his young mind, understand
why his plane going to Disneyland left without him,” he added.
Hackers stole $101 million from the BB's account with the New York
Fed. Of the amount, $20 million went to a bank in Sri Lanka, and the
money has been recovered, according to the BB.
