A FEATURE of professional life is the annual conference representing the numerous professions to which accredited practitioners belong.
Accountants, lawyers, surveyors, architects, engineers (civil, mechanical, electrical, electronic), and many others troop to prestigious hotels to listen to erudite presentations dealing with topics of current interest.
This year, of course, these annual conferences have not taken place. This is regrettable. There is much to be gained from the lively discussions relating to current issues and challenges faced by our professions.
Until this year, the Integrated Bar of Philippines (IBP) had a well-attended annual conference. Last year was no exception. The keynote speaker was former Chief Justice Lucas P. Bersamin who exhorted lawyers not to be untruthful. Many laymen, including PN’s headline writer, reasonably interpreted this to mean that lawyers should be truthful.
Unfortunately, this is one of those circumstances where the negative of a negative does not always yield a positive.
Lawyers are adept at, whenever they deem necessary, to put a positive spin on what are, sometimes rather unattractively murky circumstances.
Many lawyers, of course, are employed in legal partnerships. Some, however, provide legal services within large corporations. I shall focus on these, particularly where the corporations comprise our banking and insurance sectors.
One of the many ramifications of COVID-19 is that newsworthy stories are severely truncated and we are largely left in the dark as to how to understand what has actually happened.
A current story, where legal consequences may well appear at some stage, is the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC)’s possible probe of the $2.1 billion missing funds of the German financial technology leader Wirecard AG. It has been reported that employees of two of our major banks: BDO and BPI, have allegedly issues certifications that both banks have the missing money. The employees have been described as ‘erring’.
I hope very much that the whole truth emerges – even if this means that, for example, audit trails which should be unambiguous are found to be faulty.
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Some time ago, a family member in a local store, Toys ‘R Us, purchased some items. The money was debited from our account but not credited to Toys ‘R Us. This meant that we could not take the goods that we had paid for. Fortunately, the bank involved, BPI has an excellent Independent Director, Ignacio Bunye, who is, of course, our PN colleague. I emailed him and instantly he got in touch with BPI customer care staff, Ms Luna, who quickly put matters right. Nevertheless, there is a residual concern as to why the problem occurred. There could have been legal issues and it would be reassuring if legal expertise can quickly be brought to bear if necessary.
I believe that it is vital for legal officers of financial institutions to understand fully the bank’s systems. For example, the RCBC “cyberheist” of 2016 rather quickly exclusively blamed its Jupiter Street Branch manager Maia Deguito and her subordinate. This may have been because RCBC legal seemed to believe that the funds went straight from Bangladesh Bank’s branch in Wall Street, New York to Jupiter Street, Makati. In fact, the funds needed to be coursed through RCBC’s remittance center before they were sent to Jupiter Street.
Had RCBC’s legal officer known this, would the investigation have taken the same path?
I believe not./PN
