Things are moving fast in the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona after Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales took the stand as hostile witness for the defense last Monday. Her appearance was widely anticipated because it has been bruited about that it was the Chief Justice himself who thought of putting her on the witness stand. Defense lawyer Jose Roy III reportedly had misgivings about the plan but was unable to talk the CJ out of his own “call.”
I guess the Corona camp is viewing the trial like a game of hockey that has taken numerous overtime periods beyond regulation hours and now is the time to end the match in “sudden death.” In hockey parlance, the contest is immediately won once a player scores a goal.
The strategy called for the Ombudsman to testify on the evidence of the dollar deposits, and to seize the supposed legal infirmity of whatever material she would bring before the court, that is, by leading her to admit she has no personal knowledge about the supposed bank accounts of Corona. The scenario was supposed to set the stage for a technicality, the pronouncement of her testimony as hearsay and therefore prohibited.
A pundit observed that when Morales mentioned the 82 dollar accounts in various staggering sums in five banks, the chief legal counsel for the defense, Justice Serafin Cuevas, was taken aback as if he was hearing things for the first time. According to Dean Antonio “Tony” La Viña of the Ateneo School of Government, from then on, Cuevas’ performance seemed to show that he was “unprepared to handle the deluge of incriminating information” coming from the witness.
If calling the Ombudsman to appear as hostile witness was supposed to be a bluff, it certainly backfired, according La Viña who writes online articles for the Rappler. Cuevas tried to control the damage by insisting the Ombudsman did not comply with legal procedure in obtaining documents from the Anti-Money Laundering Council, even as he argued that compelling the Chief Justice to answer the Ombudsman violated his right against self-incrimination. But didn’t the defense hammer on the issue of giving Corona due process?
Testifying on the existence of the dollar accounts, Ombudsman Morales pointed to the Anti-Money Laundering Authority as the source of information. Many were astounded by the involvement of AMLC in this stage of the impeachment proceedings, but from where I sit, it all looks very logical. Recall that the Ombudsman took cognizance of the case filed by individuals who urged the agency to look into Corona’s alleged accumulation of illegal wealth and for violation of RA 9160, also known as the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
In a previous article (Achilles’ Heel, May 7) I wrote that when the landmark law was passed in early 2000, it was paired with the creation of the Anti-Money Laundering Council. The AMLC is composed of the governor of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas who sits as chairman and the commissioner of the Insurance Commission and the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission as members.
The composition of the AMLC is so woven into the operations of banking institutions, which washes the dirty money criminals place in the financial system. It’s easy for banks to spot money-laundering transactions because most often they are huge and happen almost at the same time.
In the testimony of Carpio-Morales aided by auditor Heide Mendoza of the Commission Audit, Corona opened a total of 23 dollar accounts from 2003 to 2005; 12 more accounts in 2006, another 35 in 2007 and another set from 28 from 2008 to 2009, bringing the total to 69 as of 2009. Several more were added in 2011, and in 2012, a total of 82 dollar accounts, purportedly containing some $12 million were tracked down by the AMLC.
The documents have yet to be authenticated, but if true, it merely validates what the financial and police agencies of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, United States and Canada were saying about the Philippine financial system when the G-7 countries pressured the Philippines to pass an anti-money laundering law in 2000: a haven of money launderers.