Malacañang challenged yesterday Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Rafael Buenaventura to investigate the reported withdrawal by ousted President Joseph Estrada — his Ateneo high school classmate — of P143.7 million from Urban Bank a day before it closed in April last year.
President Arroyo’s spokesman Renato Corona hurled this challenge to Buenaventura a day after the huge withdrawal was revealed by Reps. Joker Arroyo of Makati City and Oscar Moreno of Misamis Oriental.
The two congressmen, both members of the House panel that prosecuted Estrada in his aborted Senate impeachment trial, expressed suspicion that Buenaventura tipped off the fallen president about the impending collapse of Urban Bank.
They said Estrada withdrew a total of P143,764,096.28 from his account on April 24, 2000, Easter Monday, a day before the bank — then experiencing financial difficulties — declared a banking holiday and was never able to reopen.
"This took place when he (Estrada) was still president. Perhaps, this should be better investigated by the Central Bank," Corona told reporters at Malacañang.
"I don’t know what the Central Bank will do about this. Perhaps, it should be the Bangko Sentral which should investigate that. And if it is true, then the people will get angry with President Estrada because of this," he said.
Moreno had earlier said that Buenaventura, "like his famous Ateneo classmate, has lost the moral authority to supervise and regulate the banking sector."
For his part, Buenaventura said Estrada knew that troubled Urban Bank was facing closure, and that the only people who could have informed him were "bank chairman Arsenio Bartolome III, bank president Teodoro Borlongan and the managers and officers of the branch where his account was maintained."
At a press briefing, Buenaventura said the BSP was unaware of Urban Bank’s plans to close shop.
"That was a matter solely in the hands of the bank’s management," he said.
Reacting to the challenge of Arroyo and Moreno, Buenaventura said, "there is some misinformation."
"I think they were fed the wrong information, and all we want to do is to state the facts. There is no way we could have had any knowledge of their accounts, the plan to close down," he added.
Buenaventura denied the allegations of Arroyo and Moreno, saying he never committed any wrongdoing as alleged by the lawmakers.
He said the allegations were floated by certain quarters which are pressuring him to resign from his post.
Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr., however, thinks otherwise. He is saying that Buenaventura should have resigned when then Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo assumed the presidency last month.
"At the very least, he should have tendered a courtesy resignation when the new administration came in," Belmonte told reporters.
He said that besides his competence, Buenaventura’s qualification for the BSP job is that he was an Ateneo classmate of Estrada.
"He (Buenaventura) was closely associated with the former president, and for that alone, he should quit," he said.
Belmonte said he shares the sentiments of some of his colleagues that the BSP allowed some banking rules to be violated by Estrada.
He pointed out that although Buenaventura has claimed that the use of false names in the opening of bank accounts is allowed in certain cases, there are actually banking rules and at least one law that prohibit bank depositors from using fictitious names.
Belmonte, who managed the House prosecution panel in the impeachment trial of Estrada, said that many of his colleagues in the panel feel that the BSP allowed the deposed leader to launder money from illegal sources through the local banking system.
Bohol Rep. Ernesto Herrera, one of the complainants in the aborted impeachment case, said Buenaventura should immediately resign for sleeping on the job.
He said it is the BSP chief’s duty to protect the banking system from the alleged money-laundering activities of Estrada.
"He failed to do the job miserably, and that failure has dealt a serious blow to the integrity of the banking sector and the whole economy," Herrera said.
He said that based on the evidence presented during Estrada’s impeachment trial, the ousted leader laundered billions of pesos in the banking system "right under Buenaventura’s nose."
"At no time has the banking sector been so bastardized than in the time of Estrada. This was only possible because of the failure on the part of the Bangko Sentral and the Monetary Board to protect the banking industry," Herrera added.
He stressed that if Buenaventura was not aware of the deposed president’s money-laundering activities, then there is all the more reason for him to quit his job.
"Like Estrada before him, Buenaventura has lost every moral right to be BSP governor," Herrera said.
Corona, meanwhile, expressed confidence that the government will not find it difficult to recover Estrada’s bank deposits if they are found to be part of his ill-gotten wealth.
"Perhaps, with the correct sleuthing, unless they (Estrada lawyers) have been cunning in the transfer of these assets in various bank deposits, the Bangko Sentral can follow the paper trail of this P140 million," he said. — Marichu Villanueva, Jess Diaz, Ted Torres