SALN allows Ombudsman to secure documents

How Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales stumbled upon Chief Justice Renato Corona’s alleged dollar accounts worth more than $12 million could be traced from an important—but seemingly innocuous—declaration in every government employee’s statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN).

“I hereby authorize the Ombudsman or his duly representative to obtain and secure from all appropriate government agencies, including the Bureau of Internal Revenue, such documents that may show my assets, liabilities, net worth, business interests and financial connections,” it says in the regular SALN form.

The authorization also covers documents pertaining to the civil servant’s “spouse, unmarried children below 18 years of age living with me in my household covering past years to include the year I first assumed office in government.”

Morales pointed to this key authorization—one she said she considered a “blanket authority”—in justifying her office’s investigation of Corona and why it eventually tapped the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), which then revealed the Chief Justice’s alleged foreign currency deposits.

Clincher

“That was the clincher,” she testified on Day 38 of the impeachment trial.

“The Chief Justice himself authorized the Ombudsman in his SALN to determine from other government agencies any assets, any properties, liabilities, net worth or business interests from the time he joined the government up to the present,” she pointed out under cross examination by private prosecutor Mario Bautista.

Morales said she tapped the AMLC after receiving three complaints on Corona in connection with his alleged unexplained wealth. The council then furnished her a 17-page document detailing 705 transactions pertaining to Corona’s dollar deposits.

The report indicated that the Chief Justice maintained 82 such accounts and kept more than $12 million in “fresh deposits” between April 2003 and early 2012.

“I thought I could probably gather from AMLC certain bank transactions,” Morales said, noting that the complaints had “some slanting about the violation of the Anti-Money Laundering Law.”

Corona’s alleged foreign currency accounts were purportedly found in the following bank branches: Bank of Philippine Islands-Acropolis (8), BPI-Tandang Sora (18), BPI-San Francisco Del Monte (34), BPI Management Investment Corp. (1), Philippine Savings Bank-Cainta (8), PSBank-Katipunan (6), Allied Bank Corp. in Kamias (4), Deutsche Bank (2) and Citibank (1).

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago Tuesday moved to subpoena managers of the bank branches to verify if Corona indeed owned such accounts. Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, the presiding officer, said the matter would be tackled in caucus on Monday.

In her manifestation, Santiago floated the possibility that some of the details in the AMLC records might have been the result of a “double entry.”

“It could be possible that a simple sum of money would be represented in a double entry. One entry would be made in the credit column and another entry would be made in the debit column, although both entries would deal with one and the same amount of money,” she said.

Morales continued her PowerPoint presentation providing an “analysis” into Corona’s alleged dollar deposits. The presentation was prepared by the Commission on Audit whose commissioner, Heidi Mendoza, showed up for the second trial day in a row.

Big transactions

But prosecution halted the presentation and asked that a hard copy, titled “Analysis of Dollar Account,” be simply marked as exhibit.

Under questioning by Bautista, Morales cited the AMLC report claiming that Corona had made “significant” transactions involving the accounts during “significant events” such as the 2004 and 2007 elections, and around the time when he was impeached in December last year.

“There were significant deposits and withdrawals on significant events,” she said “When I say ‘events,’ I’m referring to the 2004 election, 2007 election, and during the period … of the impeachment proceedings.”

Corona’s alleged dollar account at BPI-Acropolis got two separate deposits worth $500,000 each on May 12 and May 14, 2004, said Morales, referring to the AMLC report.

On May 3, 2007, a separate Corona account in BPI’s San Francisco Del Monte branch received the following deposits: $293,645.23, $27,039.80, $134,603.28, $63,345.61, $53,572.71 and $15,083.83.

Morales referred to a “conservative estimate of the total funds that moved” during the week of Corona’s impeachment, allegedly to the tune of $769,681. She said the transactions involved accounts in three different banks: PSBank, Allied Bank and BPI.

Baffled by the sheer number of accounts and the “circuitous” transactions for the transfer of dollar deposits into 82 accounts with five banks, Senators Francis Escudero, Francis Pangilinan and Gregorio Honasan, in separate interviews, couldn’t think of any plausible explanation that would not put the Chief Justice in a bind. With reports from Michael Lim Ubac and Norman Bordadora