Prosecutor urges ‘small lady’ to bring bank documents

MANILA, Philippines—Prosecutor Oriental Mindoro Representative Reynaldo Umali on Thursday urged the “small lady”, whom he said had approached him with bank documents allegedly owned by impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona, to come forward now that the authenticity of the leaked records were being questioned in the impeachment court.

“Hindi kita masisisi kung ayaw mong lumabas, syempre may criminal liability. Pero alang-alang sa taong bayan, baka mas maganda na magsabi [and] to come forward (I can’t blame you if you refuse to come forward, of course there’s criminal liability. But for the sake of the public, maybe it would be good if you would tell and come forward),” Umali said.

In his opinion, the Senate is right in pursuing inquiry into the said document because of the “perceived violation of the bank secrecy law.”

Umali explained that the prosecution was glad that Philippine Savings Bank president Pascual Garcia III’s testimony proved that “all of the accounts in the signature cards handed over to me, which became the basis for our subpoena, were existing.”

Whether the leaked documents could have been doctored, Umali said that they had no idea whether the document they received may have been changed but he stressed that the issue should not be the perceived violation of the bank secrecy law but that Garcia finally admitted that the accounts were existing.

“Mahirap naman siguro hulaan iyong mga numero [of accounts] (Maybe it’s difficult to guess those number),” he said, explaining that their earlier request for subpoena had been denied because the impeachment court required that the prosecution include the account numbers and not just the branch of the bank being asked to testify.

“Para walang duda (So that there will be no doubt), the prosecution attached the document,” Umali said.