PS Bank execs ‘very evasive’ over Corona bank records
MANILA, Philippines – The prosecution said that the witnesses from Philippine Savings Bank (PS Bank) have been “very, very evasive” in answering questions asked by the impeachment court.
“It is very clear that there is evasion,” Marikina Representative Romero Quimbo said in a press briefing Wednesday after the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona.
PS Bank president Pascual Garcia and PS Bank Katipunan branch manager Annabelle Tiongson were grilled in Wednesday’s trial over the contents of the bank documents allegedly under the name of Corona to determine if these were faithful reproductions of the original.
Both Garcia and Tiongson previously said in their testimonies that the documents were fake because there were “differences.”
The documents that were used as basis to subpoena bank records and the bank officials were allegedly handed to Oriental Mindoro Representative Reynaldo Umali by a “small lady.”
Quimbo said the document was shown to Garcia and Tiongson to examine but both claimed the evidence to be “fake” only after the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order against the Senate’s subpoena of Corona’s foreign currency deposits.
“They had all the time in the world to examine it, and to say, at the very first day that [Garcia] was called here, ‘this document is fake, it is not real,'” Quimbo said.
“But did we hear them say that? Never did,” Quimbo said. “They brought out all the documents pertaining to the peso accounts, they brought out all the other matters pertaining to the ending balance, but never did they talk that the document was fake,” he added.
Quimbo said that there were “seeming inconsistencies” in the testimony of the witnesses.
The witnesses only said initially that there “seemed to be differences” but now “they feel strongly in saying that this is fake,” Quimbo said.
The best way to test the credibility of the witness was to have Garcia bring the original document so it could finally be determined if the witnesses were correct in saying that the document was falsified, Quimbo said.
