MANILA, Philippines – Representative Neptali Gonzales, majority floor leader at the House of Representatives, said that the search for the identity of the “small lady” was becoming more important than “pursuing the accountability of the chief justice in an impeachment trial.”
“If there was anybody accountable for violating [Republic Act] 1405 or the Bank Secrecy Law, the impeachment court is not the proper forum to pursue that,” Gonzales said.
He said that it was looking like the prosecution was the one under trial on whether the bank documents handed by the “small lady” to Oriental Mindoro representative Reynaldo Umali were fake or not.
Gonzales was referring to the photocopy of the bank documents in the name of Chief Justice Renato Corona from Philippines Savings Bank (PSBank) that were allegedly handed to Umali by a “small lady.”
The prosecution team used the document as basis for a request to subpoena Corona’s bank account records and the officers of PSBank.
PSBank president Pascual Garcia and PSBank Katipunan branch manager Annabelle Tiongson said in their testimony that the documents were fake, prompting the senator-judges to question the prosecution how they obtained it.
“It looks now like it is representative Umali who is being investigated, which should not be the case because the accused is the chief justice,” Gonzales said.
He said that it should be a separate case and should be outside of the impeachment court so that the senator-judges could refocus on the trial of the chief justice.