PHNO-OPINION: RAUL PANGALANGAN: HOW THE DOLLAR ACCOUNTS WERE 'OPENED'

RAUL PANGALANGAN: HOW THE
DOLLAR ACCOUNTS WERE 'OPENED'

MANILA, MAY 21, 2012
(INQUIRER) By: Raul C. Pangalangan (photo) - (Editor's
Note: This is a weekly review of the impeachment trial. It aims to help the
public appreciate the legal issues and enable them to be engaged more
meaningfully in this historic process.)
The law says the dollar accounts are "absolutely confidential," and yet this
week they were laid bare before the Senate. How this was done was a stroke of
either genius or lawyerly cunning, depending on where you stand.
The prosecution was stumped by the all-encompassing language of the Foreign
Currency Deposits Act: dollar accounts are absolutely confidential.
The prosecution earlier tried to pry the information out of the Philippine
Savings Bank president. The defense objected, and Senate President Juan Ponce
Enrile upheld them.
The Supreme Court confirmed that by issuing a temporary restraining order
(TRO). And the Senate, voting 13 to 10, agreed to respect that TRO. Unless the
high court lifted the TRO, the only way to reopen the issue was from outside.

During the long Easter break, civil society leaders filed several complaints
before Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales, a retired Supreme Court justice,
against Chief Justice Renato Corona for allegedly amassing ill-gotten wealth and
for not declaring them in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth
(SALN). The complainants did not mention any dollar amount.
The Ombudsman, acting on her constitutional antigraft powers, referred the
complaints to the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), whose charter likewise
punishes "breach of confidentiality."
Banks are required to report to the AMLC all "covered transactions" (above
P500,000 in one day) or "suspicious transactions" (bearing the earmarks of
illegality), but they are "prohibited from communicating [this] directly or
indirectly, in any manner or by any means, to any person."
One can parse the language here, and limit the confidentiality to the banks
and not to the AMLC itself.
Cat is out of the bag
The AMLC then sent the Ombudsman its 17-page report showing $12 million
dollars held in 82 bank accounts allegedly owned by the Chief Justice.
The Ombudsman then turned to another antigraft constitutional body, the
Commission on Audit, to make sense of the highly technical AMLC report. Finally,
the Ombudsman asked the Chief Justice to render an explanation.
But even at that point, the Ombudsman's investigation was completely separate
from the impeachment proceedings.
The two processes converged only after the defense itself called on the
Ombudsman and the civil society complainants to testify before the Senate, as a
precondition for the testimony of the Chief Justice himself.
When the Ombudsman testified before the Senate, defense lead counsel Serafin
Cuevas cited the confidentiality of bank documents.
Morales said she wasn't citing bank documents but rather the AMLC report.
Moreover, every SALN contains a waiver clause where the filer authorizes the
Ombudsman to countercheck the SALN with government agencies.
She didn't even offer the AMLC report in evidence; she merely waived it
repeatedly in the air, and the senators themselves asked for copies. The cat was
out of the bag.
If Cuevas was limited to evidentiary objections, it was left to the senators
to raise policy objections.
They asked: Can the AMLC release its report without a court order?
Didn't the AMLC refuse to give bank documents to the Senate earlier precisely
because of that rule?
Doesn't the law require a specific waiver of confidentiality of bank
deposits, not the generic waiver in the SALN?
Does that SALN waiver override the Bill of Rights guarantee against
warrantless searches?
Was this all scripted in a grand conspiracy? Is this the first time that the
Ombudsman has referred a complaint to the AMLC for investigation? Might not the
Ombudsman be unleashed to target the enemies of those in power? (No, Morales
replied: "I will not jeopardize my ['spotless'] 40 years in government
service.")
Bad testimony
If the Ombudsman's testimony was the prosecution's highest moment, civil
society's Harvey Keh's was the lowest.
The Senate President ordered him to show cause why he shouldn't be declared
in contempt for knowingly sending the Senate unverified papers from phantom
sources.
Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. noted the strange ways confidential documents get
to the Senate: the nameless "small lady" who handed bank statements to
congressman-prosecutor Reynaldo Umali; the unmarked envelope left at Quezon City
Rep. Jorge Banal Jr.'s gate; and now, the envelope dropped into Keh's mailbox
inside an apartment compound.
Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago went into a fit over the "Mr. and Mrs.
Anonymous" who finagle secret papers into the Senate record, noting the irony
that Keh, a good governance champion, would undermine governmental institutions
for short-term objectives.
Keh hit rock-bottom with his niggardly, piecemeal disclosure of the truth
under questioning by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada. Asked whether he contacted
journalists for publicity, he began with a flat denial, then after a few
questions furnished one name, and later yet another.
The irony is that he was testifying against Corona for trifling with the
truth.
Corona's counter-narrative
The strongest response to the Morales testimony was Inquirer columnist
Rigoberto Tiglao's column entitled "Colossal deception on Corona's accounts,"
which I summarize below (and my apologies in advance if my summary is
inadequate).
He said that the $12 million is the total of all transactions, of funds that
came in and out of Corona's various accounts, such that P100,000, if withdrawn
and then redeposited, would show a "transaction balance" of P200,000.
This was the "conceptual sleight of hand" that was used to arrive at the
colossal $12 million.
What we're looking for rather is the "account balance," the remaining sum
after all the transactions have been totaled; that is the "asset" for purposes
of the SALN, which Tiglao places at $687,433.
Moreover, he explains that if Corona made short-term money market placements,
he would have shopped around for the best rates among competing banks. Thus the
82 bank accounts over nine years.
Finally, Tiglao suggests that the dollar figures translate to some P35
million, roughly equivalent to the money paid by the government of the City of
Manila to Basa-Guidote Enterprises Inc., the corporation of the family of
Corona's wife.
Patchwork of legal cover
The defense called for the Ombudsman to testify because they were confident
that there was no proper legal way to prove the dollar accounts because these
were confidential.
They had not expected the calibrated, evidentiary sequence that would detour
via the AMLC, which would in turn produce a summary of the accounts and release
it, in ways not exactly kosher, to the Ombudsman, who then divulged them to the
Senate. Just in case, shady documents from ghost informants were sent to the
Senate, under the glare of TV cameras for good measure.
The defense can similarly justify the dollar accounts through plausible
explanations that legally explain away the problem but substantively leaves us
still wondering why, even if Tiglao's numbers are correct, Corona left them out
of his SALN, and how a government official amassed such wealth.
What the defense effectively lost the past week was the option to raise the
technical objection on confidentiality.
That is no longer a realistic option. Sure, we can consider Morales'
PowerPoint show as merely indicative of Corona's dollar wealth, but Corona is
now on the defensive and the only way out is to testify on the dollar accounts
himself.
That was the cleverest twist of all: They can't force the evidence out of
Corona, so they made him want to produce it himself.


Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
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rights reserved




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