Defense: Dichaves is Jose Velarde

Lawyers for ousted President Joseph Estrada presented their first witness yesterday, more than three years after his corruption trial began.

Estrada’s lawyers presented David Yap, 53, a lawyer who served as the official clerk during Estrada’s aborted impeachment trial at the Senate in December 2000.

Yap testified yesterday that an Estrada crony, Jaime Dichaves, had admitted in a letter to owning the Velarde account, which the defense argued cleared Estrada of allegations he took bribes from gambling operators and used another name to hide them.

The letter was submitted to the Senate during the impeachment trial, when Yap was the official custodian of documents.

"The Velarde account belonged to somebody else. That’s what we have shown so far," lead defense counsel Rene Saguisag said as Yap took the witness stand. "It was not compatible with the theory of the prosecution."

But prosecutors argued that Yap was "not an expert witness" who could verify the authenticity of the document. "All these (Yap’s testimony) have zero value. It’s a scrap of paper," Chief Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa Ignacio said.

"They have yet to establish due execution of the documents," Villa Ignacio said, highlighting the fact that the documents that defense lawyer Raymond Fortun asked to be marked as evidence were not taken up during the impeachment trial. "It’s too early to tell."

"This is the beginning of a long journey," Saguisag said as he took potshots at the prosecution lawyers who said a dud only came of the big bang they expected. "We are not here to excite the prosecution. We are here for the truth," he said.

Fortun succeeded in having the August 1999 letter of Dichaves to Equitable PCI Bank marked as evidence during the direct examination of Yap. Dichaves’ letter was about his Velarde account in Binondo, Manila.

Dichaves, through his lawyer Manuel Lazaro, addressed the letter to Equitable PCI Bank senior vice president Romuald Tang. This letter was among the documents included in the controversial "second envelope" that proved pivotal in the impeachment trial.

When asked if the defense panel would be calling Dichaves to testify that he is Jose Velarde, Saguisag was non-committal. "I don’t know. We just came in here." Dichaves fled the country shortly after Estrada’s ouster and has been in hiding since. He is now the subject of an extradition request from the Philippine government to the United States.

The other documents presented by the defense as evidence were a letter by defense lawyer Manuel Lazaro to Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. dated December 2000 and a memorandum issued by then Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Roberto Lastimoso regarding the crackdown on jueteng. Davide was the presiding justice of the impeachment court.

Saguisag was also evasive when reminded that Estrada himself admitted to signing the name "Jose Velarde" during an interview with ABS-CBN broadcaster Pia Hontiveros in February 2002. This admission from Estrada resulted in the dismissal of his nine-member legal team.

The defense lawyers told reporters that prosecutors in the aborted impeachment trial "never presented" the documents they turned over to the Sandiganbayan.

The Senate, which had convened itself into an impeachment court, voted not to unseal documents that prosecutors claimed could have proven that Estrada committed massive graft, using the alias Jose Velarde to hide vast sums of money he allegedly plundered during his 30 months in office.

Public outrage eventually snowballed into a military-backed popular uprising that toppled him a month later.

Estrada was ousted in January 2001 and was arrested in April that year. His trial began shortly thereafter, but the case has dragged with the defense raising technicalities.

In July, the same court hearing Estrada’s case ruled that he could not be prosecuted for allegedly using an alias for bank accounts where he was accused of hiding money from kickbacks.

This was seen as a major victory for Estrada since the prosecution’s case argues that Estrada’s wealth was hidden in secret bank accounts.

Estrada was replaced by his then-vice president Gloria Arroyo, who finished the remaining three years of his six-year term. In May, Mrs. Arroyo won a fresh mandate, beating Estrada-friend and movie icon Fernando Poe by about 1.1 million votes.

The opposition has claimed massive cheating, and a recent survey by the respected pollster Social Weather Stations (SWS) showed that the President’s popularity has dropped amid widespread doubts about her victory.

About 55 percent of those polled said they doubted the result of the May 10 vote, saying that Mrs. Arroyo "probably’’ or ‘‘definitely’’ cheated to secure the presidency over Poe, the survey said. — With AFP