Showing the Money Trail

Screengrab from Inquirer.net

CHEERS TO the Philippine Daily Inquirer for its use of an infographic to show the movement of the funds in the money-laundering scandal that erupted early this month. The money trail can be confusing and the graphics surely works better than text.

On Feb. 15, the Inquirer accompanied the story on the laundered funds from the Bangladesh Bank with an infographic “Dirty money trail” running four columns on its front page. The image, with some parts sourced from the Bangladesh paper The Daily Star, traced the funds stolen from the Central Bank of Bangladesh by hackers, and the channeling of $81 million through accounts held by Jupiter, Makati City branch of the Rizal Commercial and Banking Corporation (RCBC), a Philippine bank.

The Inquirer initially posted an infographic from The Daily Star, an English daily newspaper in Bangladesh on Mar. 10 which illustrated how the stolen funds moved from Bangladesh Bank to the Philippines.

The scandal made headlines when the Philippine Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) suspected that the multimillion-dollar transactions coursed through the RCBC were part of an international money-laundering scheme. A Senate hearing on the matter began yesterday, March 15.