US-based lawyer, not Carpio, owns penthouse

Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio on Thursday sought to put to rest reports that he owns a multimillion-peso penthouse condominium in a glitzy Makati City address.

“I do not own the so-called 800-square-meter penthouse unit with a swimming pool,” Carpio said in a letter sent to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

The Inquirer learned that the unit being referred to in the reports was owned by immigration and human rights lawyer Ted Laguatan, who writes a column for INQUIRER.net.

The Inquirer learned from independent sources that Laguatan, a quiet, highly successful San Francisco-based lawyer, rarely comes to the Philippines.

Carpio said his family owned one of the two units on the floor below the penthouse of Avignon Tower on H.V. De la Costa Street in Salcedo Village, Makati, and that it did not have a swimming pool.

“Avignon Tower is a 23-year-old building. It has been my residence even before I joined the Supreme Court,” Carpio said, adding that he reported this in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN).

An online ad sells a 322-sq-m, four-bedroom unit with five baths at Avignon for P19 million.

P46M net worth

Carpio, touted to be President Benigno Aquino III’s choice to replace impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona, had been dragged into the issue of unexplained wealth following disclosures of Corona’s pricey real estate properties ahead of his trial by the Senate sitting as an impeachment court.

While Malacañang and House prosecutors have been pressing Corona to disclose his SALN, Carpio and another Aquino-appointee, Associate Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, released their SALNs to a private anticorruption watchdog. Carpio listed his 2010 net worth at P46,344,928 but did not specify the properties he owned.

Like Corona, Carpio was an appointee of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to the high court.

He was a founding member of the influential law firm Villaraza, Cruz, Marcelo & Angangco. Dubbed in political circles as “The Firm,” it became known as the favorite law office of the then First Couple before it had a falling out with the Arroyos several years ago.

Of the 15 current members of the high court, only three are appointees of the present administration.

The House prosecution panel had released documents showing Corona owned a P14.5-million, 303.5-sq-m penthouse unit at The Bellagio in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City, and at least three other residential properties he supposedly could not afford on his government salary.

Impeached directly through the signatures of 188 or more than a third of the House members, Corona is facing trial in the Senate for culpable violation of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust, and graft and corruption.

Corona had vowed to fight the eight articles of impeachment filed by the House in the Senate.

The impeachment trial—the first in Philippine history to put a Chief Justice in the dock—opens on Monday.

Thorn on Aquino’s side

Corona, who previously served as Arroyo’s spokesperson and executive secretary, is considered a thorn on Mr. Aquino’s side for supposedly being biased as a magistrate in favor of his former Palace boss. Now a representative of Pampanga, Arroyo is under hospital arrest on charges of electoral sabotage.

Speaking on condition of anonymity last week, a senior court official said Malacañang and the House should also go after Carpio for his allegedly questionable acquisition of the Avignon penthouse unit.

“If they are really after the truth, then the House and Malacañang should also investigate (Carpio) for owning the 800-sq-m property,” the official then told the Inquirer.

“If they really believe that justices of the Supreme Court cannot afford to buy condominium units, then they should check out who really owns that unit in Avignon,” the official said.

The Avignon penthouse actually belonged to Laguatan, according to Inquirer sources who had attended parties hosted by the San Francisco-based lawyer in that penthouse.