Mystery bank account not that of De Lima’s aide

Senator Leila de Lima as the Rotary Club of Manila’s guest of honor and speaker in Manila Polo Club, Makati City.
INQUIRER PHOTO/LYN RILLON

BANCO de Oro (BDO) cleared on Tuesday a former staff of Sen. Leila de Lima of owning a bank account allegedly containing P24 million pesos in drug proceeds.

The bank said the account number earlier reported to be under the name of Jonathan Caranto exists. Except, it was not under his name.

Caranto, who works as an Administrative Assistant III at the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) National Prosecution Service personally went to BDO at Grace Park-9th Avenue in Caloocan to verify the existence of the account.

He said the bank informed him and his counsel Atty. Eirene Jhone E. Aguila that the account number existed, only it was at a different branch and they had no access to it. The bank also told them that the account was under a different name.

 ‘Nothing there’

This served to prove his earlier affidavit, in which he said his accounts were at the Landbank and Philippine National Bank (PNB).

“I went here at the Caloocan branch of BDO to check if they had an account under my name. I was told there wasn’t anything,”  he told Inquirer.net.

His lawyer, Aguila, said the account existed  under a different name and a different BDO branch. He stressed that they went to BDO Grace Park-9th Avenue because that was what the deposit slip indicated.

Under BDO Account Number 004460088072, there were six transactions with P4-million deposit each from Nov. 20, 2015, Dec. 14, 2015, Jan. 22, 2016, Jan. 26, 2016, Mar. 18, 2016  and the last transaction was April 29, 2016. Total deposit was P24-million.

The Bank Secrecy Law had prevented BDO from giving other details on the account numbers, Aguila said.

Caranto said he was surprised that he was named in President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug matrix, which he learned in a radio broadcast only on August 25.

“I was surprised to be included in the drug matrix. I do not have anything to do with that,” Caranto stressed, adding that he was a homebody who did not go to cockfighting as the matrix alleged.

His wife, Eileen said her husband could not even eat after learning that his name was dragged into the controversy surrounding his former boss.

After learning that his name was in the matrix, he said he immediately met with Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre with the help of some friends at the DOJ.

He said he was asked about the bank accounts and the deposit slip, and later went to the National Bureau of Investigation, where he passed a polygraph or a lie detector test.

“Jonathan Caranto’s [tests] revealed that there were no specific reactions indicative of deception to pertinent questions relevant to instant investigation,” the NBI noted.

He said he was hoping that the truth would come out, and called on those named in the matrix to also surface.