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On May 2, 2024, the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), acting under Republic Act No. 10168, ordered the freezing of the three operational bank accounts of the Leyte Center for Development (LCDe), as well as the personal bank accounts of LCDe Executive Director Jazmin Jerusalem, her son, three of her staff members, and three local suppliers of humanitarian relief goods working with LCDe. The individuals affected were not notified of the order; they only learned their accounts had been frozen when their banks informed them.<\/p>\n
LCDe has been at the forefront of development work in Leyte and Samar since 1988, providing socio-economic services and delivering community-based disaster relief. Jazmin Jerusalem has received several national and international awards for her humanitarian work, including the UN Women in Disaster Risk Reduction (WIN DRR) Leadership Award in 2021.<\/p>\n
The Court of Appeals initially rejected numerous applications to lift the freeze orders on procedural grounds. The prolonged freezing of the accounts significantly hampered LCDe\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n
On November 7, 2024, six months after the freezing order was issued, Jerusalem, a former LCDe employee, and a third person unknown to them were summoned by the CIDG-PNP. During the meeting, they were accused of violating Sections 8 and 9 of Republic Act No. 10168. According to the statements of four purported former members of the NPA, who were actively cooperating with the military, the accused were alleged to have provided the Communist Party of the Philippines and the NPA (CPP-NPA) with financial resources and supplies on three occasions between 2013 and 2016. However, on December 19, 2024, the regional court in Tacloban dismissed the case for lack of evidence linking the accused to the alleged recipients of the funds.<\/p>\n
In January 2025, the case was refiled with the same three charges, however this time against Jazmin Jerusalem alone. The same evidence was presented, and the same witnesses were summoned. After Jerusalem was informed of the new charges and the arrest warrant issued against her in February 2025, she posted bail of 600,000 Philippine Pesos (approximately 8,400 Euro).<\/p>\n
A pretrial hearing took place in March 2025, and several further hearings followed. Mary Lawlor, the then UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, repeatedly expressed solidarity with Jerusalem in social media posts. In November 2025, the AMLC filed a petition for the civil forfeiture of assets against Jerusalem, LCDe, and five other individuals whose accounts had also been frozen the previous year.<\/p>\n
On February 20, 2026, the regional court in Manila ruled that the asset-freezing and forfeiture orders issued by the AMLC should be lifted, finding no sufficient grounds to justify the continued freezing of the assets. However, the banks were unable to release the funds because the AMLC had filed a motion for a review of the decision. A further hearing scheduled for April 16, 2026, was postponed to June 19, 2026, due to the absence of the prosecution.<\/p>\n
On February 27, 2026, the regional court in Tacloban dismissed the terrorism financing charges against Jerusalem and, on April 15, 2026, upheld its decision in response to the prosecution\u2019s notice of appeal. In its reasoning, the court held that, under the Philippine Rules on Evidence, the testimony of \u201cco-conspirators\u201d cannot, without corroboration, serve as the sole basis for criminal charges. The court further found that, at the time of the alleged offences, the CPP-NPA had not been validly designated as a terrorist organization under Philippine law, and held that a foreign or supranational designation has no legal validity in the Philippines unless it has been officially published in accordance with Republic Act No. 10168.<\/p>\n
In June and July 2026, the pre-trial hearings regarding the civil forfeiture case took place. The court already scheduled hearings on the case until October 2027. The next hearing should take place on November 12, 2026.<\/p>\n
The LCDe and Jazmin Jerusalem hope the bank accounts will soon be released and the civil forfeiture case dropped, so that they can resume their work with marginalized communities.<\/p>\n
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Photo \u00a9 Jazmin Jerusalem<\/p>\n
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Leyte Center for DevelopmentOn May 2, 2024, the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), acting under Republic Act No. 10168, ordered the freezing of the three operational bank accounts of the Leyte Center for Development (LCDe), as well as the personal bank accounts of LCDe Executive Director Jazmin Jerusalem, her son, three of her staff members, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"parent":3143,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-13741","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13741"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13755,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13741\/revisions\/13755"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}