MANILA, Philippines—Philippine Savings Bank (PS Bank) President Pascual Garcia III said there are 42 point differences between the original documents of Chief Justice Renato Corona’s bank accounts and the documents included by the House prosecution team in its request for subpoena that were submitted to the Senate impeachment court.
In Garcia’s testimony, the differences he indicated include:
- The box with number 334346 is thicker in the original compared with that in Annex A in the request for supplemental subpoena where the second digit of 5 or 3 was superimposed;
- The boxed portion of specimen signature has no marking of “PEP” letters in the original, no highlights while there was “PEP” mark in the Annex A;
- There are pre-numberings for lines 1, 2 and 3 at the boxed portion of the specimen portion of the original document while Annex A has no numbers 1, 2 and 3;
- There are lines corresponding to the pre-numberings beside 1, 2 and 3 in the original document of PS Bank while there is no such line in the Annex A, which is in the possession of the House prosecution team;
- The three specimen signatures in the original documents are written with fluid strokes indicating spontaneous natural execution indicating the use of sign pen compared with Annex A showing tremors in the handwriting, with thinner lines appearing, indicating that they were traced with the use of a ballpen.
- In the original document, the word “Manila” is indicated as “MLA” while in Annex A, it was “M.L.A.”;
- In the original document, the word “Filipino” is “Fil” while in the Annex A, it appeared “fii.”
Garcia said he will submit a complete list of the discrepancies that they had discovered after comparing the original documents with the ones given by the “small lady” to the prosecution team.
“Who would have placed that (referring to the alterations in the Annex A attached by the prosecution team in its supplemental request for subpoena]? The only one who has copies of the original was the audit team (of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the Anti-Money Laundering Council). Who else would be the source that would be altered to contain the “PEP,” heaven or hell or where?” Senate president and presiding officer Juan Ponce Enrile asked Garcia.
“Perhaps the ‘small lady’ can answer that. I understand that it came from the small lady,” Garcia said.
The photocopies of PSBank account opening documents in the name of Corona were allegedly handed to Oriental Mindoro Representative Reynaldo Umali and have come under question after both PSBank president Pascual Garcia III and PSBank Katipunan branch manager Annabelle Tiongson testified that they did not come from PSBank.
Umali said the documents were handed to him by a “small lady” while he was at the Senate secretariat. However, no “small lady” was seen on the CCTV. Tiongson, in her testimony before the impeachment court, said the documents were different from what they have in their possession.
Afterwards, Quezon City Representative Jorge Banal said he received similar documents dropped off at the gate of his house.