Corona lawyers laugh off claims about US houses

Tranquil Salvador III. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Who’s flip-flopping?

Lawyers of Chief Justice Renato Corona on Thursday dismissed the supposed Johnny-come-lately claims of the House prosecution panel about Corona’s purported ownership of  California property.

Rico Paolo Quicho, one of the defense panel’s spokespersons, laughed off the challenge of House Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II for Corona to come clean on the supposed US properties which his family reportedly owned as insinuated by journalist-blogger Raissa Robles.

Quicho maintained that there was no need for Corona to repeat his previous statement denying ownerhip of a house in the City of Roseville in Placer County, California, which his daughter Maria Charina supposedly acquired.

“The Chief Justice has been very consistent in his position on this issue,” Quicho said in a press conference.

“We stand by our statement that the Chief Justice and his wife have no properties in the US. The property in California, which was mentioned in (Robles’) blog, is solely and exclusively owned by Charina,” he added.

In a text message to reporters covering the justice beat, Corona dismissed as “not true 101 percent” reports claiming that he owned two houses in Tampa, Florida, and Mountain View, California.

Mailing addresses

The Chief Justice said the places that Robles mentioned in her blog entry were his “temporary mailing addresses” whenever he and his family visited the US and that his daughters had also rented the houses, one of which was owned by a family friend.

A day later, Corona admitted that his daughter Maria Charina had purchased a “dirt cheap” house in Placer County which, he said, was payable in 30 years.

In a subsequent text message, the Chief Justice clarified that he was only referring to himself and his wife Cristina when he said that “we do not own any property in the United States.”

Quicho said it was “malicious and unjust” for Gonzales to speculate that whatever Corona’s children had bought for themselves was owned by their father.

He also chided Gonzales for claiming that Charina’s P6-million property in the ritzy McKinley Hill, Taguig City, and California home may have been ill-gotten.

“I just want to refresh (Gonzales’ memory) that the allegation of ill-gotten wealth was already written off by the Senate. Charina was never a dummy for her father,” Quicho said.

45 properties

Tranquil Salvador III, a member of the defense panel, surmised that the prosecution’s insistence to prop up the issue over the California property was intended to cover up its failure to prove that Corona had 45 properties.

“Whether they like it or not, the defense was pretty successful in destroying their ‘45 properties theory.’ Now they want to downplay that by talking about the supposed US properties of the Coronas,” Salvador said.

“But who really changed their story? Isn’t it the prosecution who first claimed that the Chief Justice owns 45 properties only to admit later that it’s not true?” he stressed.

Salvador noted that no less than Marikina Representative Romero Quimbo, the prosecution spokesperson, who admitted that the House prosecutors looked for Corona’s properties in the United States, but they only discovered Charina’s California home.

“If they had information about the US properties and believed in its relevance to the impeachment case, then why did they not include it in the impeachment complaint? It’s simply because they know it will not help their case anyway,” he said.