Chief Justice is target, Corona wife says of graft case

Chief Justice Renato Corona

The wife of impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona on Thursday skipped the start of preliminary investigation of the graft case filed against her by a former employee of the John Hay Management Corp. (JHMC) at the Department of Justice.

Instead of appearing at the proceeding, Ma. Cristina Corona took her oath and submitted her counter-affidavit before Senior Deputy State Prosecutor Richard Anthony Fadullon several hours before the start of the preliminary hearing.

Mrs. Corona was a member of the board of directors of the JHMC, the estate manager of the Camp John Hay Special Economic Zone, from 2001 and was appointed the firm’s president and chair in 2007.

In her absence, lawyer Stanley Fabido represented Mrs. Corona during the preliminary investigation presided over by State Prosecutor Vimar Barcellano.

The case for “unauthorized use of public funds” was filed by Frank Daytec who accused Mrs. Corona of illegally using over P177,000 in JHMC funds to pay for the personal expenses that she, her husband and their son Francis incurred while staying at the Baguio Country Club on separate occasions from 2008 to 2009.

Daytec, a former JHMC operations group manager, said the Coronas committed “conjugal rape of public funds.”

In her counter-affidavit, Mrs. Corona vehemently denied that she violated government rules on disbursing public funds while she was an official of the JHMC.

She said the case accusations against her were “all bare-faced lies” and “purely black propaganda” intended to malign her husband who was impeached by the House of Representatives last week.

“It does not take much effort to see that this is directly and unequivocally connected to the political pressure by some quarters for my husband… to inhibit from certain cases pending in the Supreme Court or altogether resign from the Court,” she said in her 17-page affidavit.

“The Chief Justice is clearly the target, not me,” she added.