Prosecution defends photocopy of Corona bank accounts, says ‘no bad faith’

MANILA, Philippines – Quezon Representative Lorenzo Tanada said there was no bad faith on the part of the prosecution when they submitted the photocopy of bank accounts allegedly in the name of Chief Justice Renato Corona to the impeachment court as basis for their request to issue subpoenas.

The document was testified to as fake by the Philippine Savings Bank (PSBank) president Pascual Garcia and PSBank Katipunan Branch manager Annabelle Tiongson who were summoned by the Senate, acting as an impeachment court, as requested by the prosecution.

Tanada said the impeachment tribunal “cannot attribute bad faith to the prosecution group because of a declaration in the request [that the prosecution] cannot vouch for [its] authenticity.”

“And yet the impeachment tribunal decided to issue the subpoena,” Tanada said.

The photocopy of bank accounts in the name of Corona from Philippines Savings Bank (PSBank) was allegedly handed to Oriental Mindoro Representative Reynaldo Umali by a “small lady.”

The prosecution team said the document was used as basis for its request to subpoena the bank account records and the officers of PSBank.

Garcia and Tiongson denied in their testimony that the photocopied document came from the bank, prompting the senator-judges to question the prosecution on how they obtained it.

“The only way to check on whether the document is original is for the bank itself to bring the original documents here [for comparison],” Tanada said.

The defense panel said that all the pieces of evidence and testimonies that were obtained on the basis of the document could be stricken out of the records because they were obtained illegally, and thus, were inadmissible as evidence.