MANILA, Philippines—Want to know how much Chief Justice Renato Corona acquired his properties? Look it up in the deeds of absolute sale with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Register of Deeds.
Corona consistently did not put down the acquisition costs of his properties in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) from 2002 to 2010 because these were available in other documents and he had no intention to conceal this, defense counsel Ramon Esguerra said Friday.
“You can’t impute bad faith, you can’t impute malice to anyone who, in the execution of accounting forms, has followed the same pattern from beginning to the very end,’’ Esguerra told reporters in a phone-patch interview. “Yes, the figures may be incomplete, but was there bad faith? There’s none.’’
This, he said, is called the principle of consistency in accounting.
Contrary to the claims of the prosecution panel, there was no intention on Corona’s part to “conceal” the acquisition costs of his properties since these could be easily verified in the deeds of absolute sale with the BIR and the Register of Deeds.
The deeds of absolute sale are filed with the BIR for the payment of capital gains tax and the Register of Deeds doesn’t issue a transfer certificate title or condominium certificate title without these, he said.
‘Easily available’
Esguerra noted that copies of the deeds of absolute sale had been submitted as evidence by the prosecution to the impeachment court.
“We should be able to disabuse our mind that there is concealment of the true value of the properties stated in the SALN,” he said. “There can be no charge of concealment because these are public documents. These are easily available.”
At last Thursday’s impeachment trial, senators quibbled over whether fair market value, assessed value or acquisition cost should be the basis for declaring assets in the SALN.
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said the acquisition cost was important but reminded the senators that the issue at hand was whether Corona declared his SALN and whether he disclosed assets in his SALN.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson also raised the possibility that Corona might have underdeclared the value of his properties by at least P5 million in his 2010 SALN, hence, the need for him to take the witness stand to clarify this.
Truthful disclosure
Esguerra stressed that Corona had truthfully disclosed his properties in his SALNs based on their fair market value, as was the practice then, and that no law required the declaration of assets “based on the acquisition cost.”
Citing a report by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, Esguerra said that practice seemed so widespread that even Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad declared his properties in his 2010 SALN based on their assessed value.
“Like the CJ, he left the column of the acquisition cost blank. What does this mean? … No one’s following it,” Esguerra said. “It’s only now that we’re giving it importance because the Chief Justice was impeached.”
Does this make it right?
“Has he declared his assets? Yes. Did he use the correct values? Well, he did use the fair market/assessed value based on the tax declaration. Is that truthful? Truthful,” Esguerra said.
Senator’s SALNs made public?
“He did not declare the acquisition costs because as far as he was concerned these are subject matters of documents which can’t be concealed anyway.”
Historically, acquisition cost is used to determine one’s net worth, Esguerra said.
Esguerra could not say if lead defense counsel Serafin Cuevas would push through with his pronouncement on television that the defense would make public the SALNs of senators to show that they also used fair market value as basis.
“That’s not on our list. I’m not sure if he will pursue this,” he said.