Davide to prosecution: Prove P500 M is ill-gotten

Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr., presiding officer of the impeachment tribunal, ruled last night that the burden of proof that the P500 million President Estrada signed for in an investment transaction under the name of Jose Velarde last February was ill-gotten lay with the prosecution.

Arguing it was unrelated to the articles of impeachment, defense lawyer Jose Flaminiano tried to strike off the testimony of a surprise witness, Equitable-PCIBank official Clarissa Ocampo, that Mr. Estrada had signed as Jose Velarde.

The prosecution said the multimillion-peso transaction was way above the assets declared by the President in his statement of assets and liabilities as of Dec. 31, 1999, indicating the wealth was unexplained and therefore ill-gotten.

Davide, however, said unless the prosecution establishes that the P500 million was indeed ill-gotten, then Ocampo’s testimony carries no weight.

House prosecutor Joker Arroyo promised that they would be able to produce evidence linking the Velarde/Estrada transaction to spurious fund sources.

Meanwhile, Senate Pre-sident Pro Tempore Blas Ople said yesterday the prosecution has failed in the 12 days of impeachment trial to link President Estrada to jueteng protection money.

The senator also said in a press conference that it is now probably advisable for the President to personally testify in the impeachment trial.

Ople said that prosecutor Oscar Moreno made a valiant effort to build a bribery case against the President. Moreno, a congressman from Misamis Oriental and a banker for about 20 years, called branch managers of Equitable-PCIBank to the witness stand in an effort to link the President to the bank deposits made by Yolanda Ricaforte.

Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis "Chavit" Singson has tagged Ricaforte as the auditor of jueteng protection money he had collected allegedly for the President.

Ople, however, said that the efforts of Moreno had fallen short because "there was no thread of evidence linking the President to the illegal jueteng money."

"All that has been achieved so far is to give the public a good seminar on deposit and withdrawal practices. The educational benefit to the public cannot be doubted, but its value to the prosecution appears to be negligible," Ople said.

At the same time, he urged the defense lawyers to put the President on the witness stand, thus joining former President Corazon Aquino and fellow Senators Raul Roco and Renato Cayetano in making the same suggestion.

"There are many sectors who want the President to personally testify on his behalf. There are claims made that only he could personally deny and refute," Ople said.

He added that there are "obvious gaps" in the prosecution testimonies and this may be the best opportunity for the President to testify. He also noted the earlier pronouncement of the President that he personally wanted to appear before the impeachment court.

There were doubts that the President would ever testify before the Senate, especially after he had admitted before foreign correspondents that his lawyer Edward Serapio received P200 million from Singson. The President also said he had rejected Singson’s urging to receive jueteng money but Singson had apparently succeeded in giving the money to Serapio.

The President was also quoted in a later interview with The Associated Press as saying his public relations consultant Paul Bograd received a P5-million check from Singson. Singson told the Senate that the P5 million was the only money in check he had delivered to the President. He submitted to the impeachment court the canceled check worth P5 million. The back of the check had the account number of the person who deposited it in a bank.

The President later claimed that he had no personal knowledge of Bograd’s receipt of the P5-million check. He said that Bograd had apparently deposited the amount in the bank, and that it was probably used for conducting opinion polls. – Efren Danao