KARAPATAN: AMLC focused on repressing people’s organizations, NGOs instead of going after corrupt gov’t officials, contractors
KARAPATAN Public Information
PRESS RELEASE
5 September 2025
Reference: Cristina Palabay, KARAPATAN secretary general, 09173162831
KARAPATAN Public Information Desk, 09189790580
KARAPATAN: AMLC focused on repressing people’s organizations, NGOs instead of going after corrupt gov’t officials, contractors
KARAPATAN assailed the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) for being fixated on filing trumped-up terrorism financing charges and civil forfeiture cases against people’s organization, faith-based institutions and development NGOs, when it should be training its guns on high-ranking government officials and contractors of big-ticket infrastructure projects who are now the subjects of ongoing investigations on bureaucratic corruption.
“The fact that these personalities have been able to flout all the stringent regulations imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and other financial institutions that are supposedly designed to monitor suspicious money trails is very telling,” said Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay. “What has the AMLC done to investigate the billions of pesos in public monies raked in by contractors, funds that ended up lining the pockets of officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and their political patrons in the form of ‘commissions,’ ‘SOP,’ ‘for the boys’ and the like?”
“The AMLC has long proven to be an instrument to persecute grassroots-oriented NGOs and pro-people organizations, rather than a tool to dismantle big-time money laundering networks,” decried Palabay. “As of February 2025, at least 93 activists, mostly development workers, have been charged with violating the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act,” added Palabay, “and 17 development NGOs have had their bank accounts frozen for terrorism-related cases.”
“We should also be vigilant about where this corruption investigation is going,” said Palabay. “The last time an anti-corruption investigation of this scale was conducted was during the PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund) scandal that was exposed in 2013, where senators, congressmen and other government officials were charged alongside the alleged mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles” said Palabay. “In the end, however, only small fry like Napoles were convicted and her political patrons walked free.”
“In today’s corruption scandal, billionaire contractors like Sarah Discaya and their ilk are the focus, and must be held accountable, but their cohorts in public office who use their positions to amass more power, wealth and influence must be held to higher standards and brought to justice as well.”
Said Palabay, “They should include the bigwigs within the ruling Marcos clique, some of whom have already been identified. Otherwise,” she stressed, “this whole thing will end up as one big exercise in Marcosian grandstanding.”
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KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties. It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign.