Senate okays opening of Corona bank records

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, the presiding officer of the impeachment trial, made it clear that the court had not yet ruled on the admissibility in evidence of the bank records. LYN RILLON

The impeachment court on Monday decided to subpoena Chief Justice Renato Corona’s bank records since 2005, including his foreign currency deposits, a move that the prosecution team of the House of Representatives said would be “crucial” in proving that the Chief Justice misdeclared his statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs).

Tranquil Salvador III, a defense lawyer, said the defense panel was still studying its legal remedy, insisting that the prosecution’s attempt to scrutinize several bank accounts that Corona allegedly owned was not related to the second impeachment article—the Chief Justice’s failure to declare his SALNs.

In a ruling read by Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III, the Senate impeachment court lifted the effectivity of the Bank Secrecy Law insofar as Corona was concerned, subject to “specific limits.”

The Senate impeachment court is exempted from Republic Act No. 1405, or the Bank Secrecy Law.

Covered by the ruling are deposit accounts in Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), Philippine Savings Bank (PSBank), and “other bank accounts, including time deposits, money market placements, peso/dollar accounts and the like.”

“The majority votes to grant the prosecution’s requests for subpoena to the responsible officers of Philippine Savings Bank and Bank of the Philippine Islands,” said Sotto.

The ruling directed top officials of the two banks to appear at the Senate at 2 p.m. on February 8 “to testify and bring and/or produce before the court documents on the alleged bank accounts of Chief Justice Corona, only for the purpose of the instant impeachment proceedings.”

The court ordered the manager of the BPI branch on Ayala Avenue, Makati City, to produce “the original and certified true copies of the account opening forms/documents for Bank Account No. 1445-8030-61 in the name of Renato C. Corona and the bank statements showing the balances of the said account.”

For BPI, the account balances subpoenaed by the court covered six years: Dec. 31, 2005; Dec. 31, 2006; Dec. 31, 2007; Dec. 31, 2008; Dec. 31, 2009; and Dec. 31, 2010.

For PSBank, the account balances covered four years: Dec. 31, 2007; Dec. 31, 2008; Dec. 31, 2009; and Dec. 31, 2010.

These balances concern Corona’s 10 accounts with PSBank: 089-19100037-3, 089-13100282-6, 089-121017358,089-121019593, 089-121020122,089-121021681, 089-141-00746-9,089-14100814-5, 089-121-01195-7 and 089-141-00712-9.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, the presiding officer of the impeachment trial, made it clear that the court had not yet ruled on the admissibility in evidence of the bank records.

“The resolution of this court was simply to authorize the issuance of a subpoena, and not whether those evidence subpoenaed are admissible evidence given the fact that they apparently appear in violation of existing laws,” said Enrile.

He said that this question would be resolved in “due course.”

“We are not judging the admissibility of these evidence. This issue will come out, when the subpoenaed materials and testimonies are offered in evidence. All of these incidental issues will be (discussed) at the proper time,” he said.

Caucus

The ruling was arrived at following a caucus by the Senate, which acted on the twin requests for the issuance of subpoena, both dated January 31, on the following documents:

Customer identification and specimen signature cards of the PSBank accounts of Corona “which won P1 million in the PSBank monthly millions raffle promo as listed in the official list of winners as of March 13, 2008.”

Monthly bank statements from the time of opening to January 2012 of the PSBank accounts under the name of Corona.

Other PSBank accounts, including time deposits, money market placements, peso/dollar accounts and the like belonging to  Corona or his wife, Cristina.

Original and certified true copies of the account opening form, monthly bank statements for 2005 to December 2010, and December 2011 of Bank Account No. 1443-8030-61 in the name of Corona “an such other accounts that are in the name of Renato Corona and/or Cristina Corona.”

‘Unreasonable search’

The defense panel manifested in a consolidated opposition and rejoinder, ahead of the caucus, its position that the bank records were irrelevant to the  impeachment complaint.

“Once again, the impeachment court is being hoodwinked into sanctioning a fishing expedition. Indeed, this has grown tiresome to the point that complainants have been publicly warned ‘You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time,’” said the defense in the rejoinder.

The defense had hoped that the court would not allow an “unreasonable search.”

But the court disagreed, resolving to grant the issuance of the requests for subpoena to testify and subpoena to produce documents subject, however, to certain limitations.

The ruling made it clear that “a general inquisitorial examination … will not be enforced.”

“After an examination of the documents sought to be produced in both requests, this court is of the strong view that the production of documents pertaining to the bank accounts of Chief Justice Corona should be closely related to the filing of his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) inasmuch as the funds in said bank accounts may be considered as his personal properties which are required to be properly and truthfully declared in the SALN,” it said.

“The Court takes due notice of the fact that the date of the SALNs of the Chief Justice are all dated as of the 31st day of December of the years 2002 to 2010. Thus, it is reasonable to issue the subpoena for the production of bank records as of the 31st of December for the years requested,” said the ruling.

The court rejected the defense’s contention that the issuance of subpoena would violate the Bank Secrecy Law (BSL) and Anti-Money Laundering Act.

The court cited the fact that Section 2 of RA 1405 (BSL) mandated that the “disclosure of information relating to bank accounts in local currency cannot be made except in five instances,” and this exceptions included impeachment cases.

The court also invoked the prevailing jurisprudence on secrecy of bank accounts promulgated by the Supreme Court itself in several decisions which “relaxed the rule on the absolute confidential nature of bank deposits, even foreign currency deposit accounts.”

The cases cited were Salvacion v. Central Bank of the Philippines (1997), China Banking Corp. v. Court of Appeals (2006), and Ejercito v. Sandiganbayan (2006).

“The majority is of the view that the present impeachment proceedings present a valid exception to the general rule on confidentiality of information on bank accounts even for foreign currency bank accounts,” the court said.

The court made it clear that the nondisclosure of bank records was still the “general rule.”

“However, the court is only issuing the subpoena relating to the bank accounts of Chief Justice Corona because of the pendency of the present impeachment proceedings and for no other reason,” said the court.

Iloilo Representative Niel Tupas Jr., the chief House prosecutor, thanked the Senate impeachment court’s decision to allow the opening of Corona’s bank accounts.

Speaking in a posttrial press conference, Tupas said the prosecution would point out the discrepancies in the amounts contained in the bank accounts from 2007 to 2010 and the amounts declared in Corona’s SALNs.

Tupas earlier said that an anonymous source provided the prosecution with photocopies of what appeared to be PSBank documents.

$700,000 deposit

He said the customer identification and specimen signature card in the account name of Corona, Renato Coronado with Renato C. Corona as the authorized signatory showed an initial deposit of $700,000 (about P38 million in October 2008) which was not declared in Corona’s SALN.

Tupas said that Corona declared only the following amounts as “cash and investments” in his SALNs from 2002 to 2010: P2.7 million (2002), P3.3 million (2003), P3.3 million (2004), P3.3 million (2005), P2.5 million (2006), P2.5 million (2007), P2.5 million (2008), P2.5 million (2009) and P3.5 million (2010).  With reports from Marlon Ramos and Maila Ager, INQUIRER.net

Originally posted: 7:07 pm | Monday, February 6th, 2012