Cristina Corona INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
The prosecution on Monday raised the possibility it would ask the Senate impeachment court to subpoena a bank deposit account of Chief Justice Renato Corona’s wife to disprove his defense that the money from the sale of her family’s property found its way into his three bank accounts for safekeeping.
Marikina Representative Romero Quimbo said the subpoena on Cristina Corona’s account with Land Bank of the Philippines following the sale in 2001 of the property owned by her family’s Basa-Guidote Enterprises Inc. (BGEI) may be used in the prosecution’s rebuttal.
“In the event that the defense will contend that the money found in Chief Justice’s PSBank account was the BGEI purchase money, we will carefully determine, on rebuttal, the necessity of having a subpoena issued to examine the Land Bank account of Mrs. Corona to determine the money trail,” Quimbo told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
On Thursday, the defense presented former Manila Mayor Lito Atienza as witness to show that the city government had paid P34.7 million to Corona’s wife “in trust” for the sale of the BGEI property in Sampaloc.
“Note that the defense needs to show on a step-by-step basis how the exact BGEI purchase price deposited in 2002 to the Land Bank account of Mrs. Cristina Corona reached the personal account of the Chief Justice in PSBank eight years later,” Quimbo said.
He said Atienza’s testimony, while presented to show that the amounts found in Corona’s accounts were not ill-gotten, had backfired on the defense.
“It completely unmasked the various conflicting claims and falsehoods peddled by the Chief Justice outside the courtroom with the testimony of the defense witnesses,” he said.
Quimbo said Corona benefitted from the transaction when he borrowed P11 million from the proceeds of the sale, which he used to buy the P11 million worth La Vista property.
“We don’t believe this actually took place since by the time he got the supposed loan in 2003, the corporation was no longer in existence,” Quimbo stressed.
He likewise said Corona showed how deep his involvement was in this questionable transaction when he allowed this money be deposited in his own personal account to be able to hide the money from the other claimants, including Sister Flory Basa, Cristina’s aunt; and the other Basa heirs.
“The Chief Justice was an indispensable participant in depriving his wife’s other relatives from uncovering the money hidden in his own personal bank account. Throughout this, he showed that he is not an uninvolved participant, but a main player in the scheme,” he said.