PS Bank exec reiterates Corona bank documents ‘fake’

MANILA, Philippines – An officer of the Philippine Savings Bank reiterated that the photocopies of bank documents allegedly belonging to Chief Justice Renato Corona and which were presented by the prosecution at Corona’s impeachment trial were “fake”.

“They are not the same. It’s fake,” said Annabelle Tiongson, branch manager of the PS Bank Katipunan, Quezon City, in her testimony Wednesday, the 18^th day of the trial before the Senate, acting as an impeachment court.

Senator Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada, who was questioning Tiongson, asked if the documents were “faithful reproductions of the original bank documents”.

Tiongson said that the account numbers may have come from other sources like when a client writes his or her account number behind cheques or when banks tellers do so.

However, Estrada said he was not convinced and stated his belief that the document presented by the prosecution was indeed a “faithful reproduction of the original.”

Meanwhile, Senator Franklin Drilon asked how Tiongson was able to say that the photocopied document was a fake.

The witness said that she compared the document with the original bank copies and noticed some differences.

When asked for the specifics, Tiongson said: “There were entries in the original that were not in the photocopy and there were entries in the photocopy that were not on the original.”

However, Tiongson said that the faking of the document did not happen in their branch. Tiongson added that she only became the branch manager of the PS Bank Katipunan Branch in 2010. Corona’s accounts in question were in 2008 and 2009.