MANILA, Philippines–The closed circuit television (CCTV) in the Senate showed no ‘little lady’ handing bank documents to a member of the prosecution team, Senate Majority Leader Vicente “Tito” Sotto III reported on Monday.
Sotto turned over a copy of the CCTV to the Senate which he requested to find out if Oriental Mindoro Representative Reynaldo Umali’s claim was true that a “small lady” gave him the identification and specimen signature cards of Chief Justice Renato Corona with the bank.
“It has not contained any little ladies giving anything to Representative Umali from the time he arrived 1:00 p.m. up to the time that he boarded his vehicle…” Sotto said
Umali told the Senate last week that he did not know the lady and the particular instance the documents were given to him.
The documents were attached by the prosecution team when they requested the Senate to subpoena the bank records of Corona.
Before this, Senate Pro Tempore Jose “Jinggoy” lengthily questioned Anabelle Tiongson, the branch manager of the Philippine Savings Bank in Katipunan, Quezon City, about the specimen signature of Corona submitted to the Senate.
Tiongson initially identified the documents shown to him by Estrada as a copy of the original but later withdrew it after she realized that the document was the one that was submitted to the chamber by his boss, Pascual Garcia III, president of PSBank.
In his testimony last week, Garcia said the documents submitted by the prosecution were different from the original copy of the bank.
Tiongson confirmed his boss’ statement, saying the documents of the prosecution team seemed fake.