MANILA, Philippines—President Benigno Aquino warned on Friday of economic sanctions from the international community in the wake of the Supreme Court’s order stopping the Senate from compelling a bank to release records on foreign currency accounts allegedly belonging to impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona’.
Aquino said the country was a signatory to a number of treaties against money laundering and that the precedent set by the Supreme Court’s temporary restraining order might be seen as a violation of the agreements’ provisions.
“If this precedent is highlighted too much there might be sanctions from the world financial community that we are not following the treaty obligations,” the President told reporters when asked about his thoughts on the Supreme Court’s order restraining the Senate from compelling PSBank to disclose records pertaining to a number of foreign currency accounts.
“So there would be an impact on the economy,” he added.
Aquino said laws protecting foreign currency accounts from undue scrutiny were not meant to protect criminals and their loot stashed as dollar deposits in the country’s banks. Corona, however, is not accused of money laundering.
Aquino dared the impeached magistrate to reveal the contents of his alleged foreign currency accounts if indeed he has nothing to hide committed no wrong.
“What has bothered me from the start of this issue is that if you steal—I’m not saying the respondent has been proven to have stolen—and you place the loot in a foreign currency account, you can hide it from investigators,” the President said.
“I don’t think that is the objective of those who crafted this law. We may encourage depositors but not tell drug lords from other countries, ‘Come to the Philippines; here your loot can’t be looked into’,” he added.
Aquino adverted to his reading of a Supreme Court ruling on a case which he said indicated that “those who committed an injustice should not find refuge in this particular law.”
“So I repeat: We are public servants. That includes having public trust,” Aquino said.
“It would be better if the respondent, if he had nothing to hide, voluntarily disclosed his deposits. ‘Open these accounts and you will see I have nothing to hide’,” he added, daring the chief justice to reveal his foreign currency accounts despite the Supreme Court TRO.
Aquino said a lawmaker told him Friday morning that if a precedent on the dollar accounts is set, it would have been caused by the impeachment process.
He said the Supreme Court’s reading of the law on foreign currency deposits was “too narrow.”
“Can persons who did something wrong place the proceeds of their crimes into a dollar account?” he said.
He said he was not saying Corona has been proven to have committed a crime but added that there were issues on the accuracy of the chief justice’s statements of assets, liabilities and net worth.
“Now, if you’re going to block the examination, it would send a bad message that this would be a way to conceal,” Aquino said.
He said nobody wants a constitutional crisis amid questions on whether acts by the the Senate acting as an impeachment court could be appealed to the Supreme Court.
“We need to see the reaction of the Senate,” he said, noting that the senators were scheduled to hold a caucus on the matter on Monday.