Prosecutors to present 3 witnesses vs Estrada

The Sandiganbayan paved the way yesterday for the presentation of the prosecutors’ three last witnesses who will testify that a portion of San Juan Mayor JV Ejercito’s P3 million account was deposited into the fictitious Jose Velarde account of his father, deposed President Joseph Estrada.

In a five-page resolution, the special division denied with finality the appeal of the younger Estrada to reverse its original decision which allowed the testimonies of PDIC vice president Aurora Baldoz and two other officials of the Export and Import Bank (EIB), formerly Urban Bank, to which the account was opened. It stated that defense lawyers raised no new issues that could reverse its previous ruling. "By and large, it appears that the matters brought out by movants in their motion for reconsideration are substantially the same arguments raised in their motion to quash subpoena, which the court had sufficiently passed upon."

"Wherefore, the instant motions are hereby denied," the anti-graft court declared, as it resumes today its trial on the plunder case the government filed against the ex-president on charges of large-scale corruption where he allegedly amassed some P3.2 billion in unlawfully acquired money and numerous mansions during his almost two years in office.

Ejercito’s lawyer Rufus Rodriguez told Justices Minita Chico-Nazario, Edilberto Sandoval and Teresita Leonardo-de Castro that his client’s EIB bank account is covered by the country’s bank secrecy laws, as he maintained that the 33-year-old local chief executive is not a party to the plunder case.

On Feb. 10, the court sustained the prosecutors’ position that these testimonies are important because it involves transactions made in the Equitable-PCIBank account of Estrada and that it squarely falls under the power of the Ombudsman to investigate accounts which are considered suspicious.

"Considering that the grounds upon which this motion are anchored are the very same grounds advanced by Ejercito in his previously filed motion to quash subpoena which was denied by the court, the instant motion, for the same rationale, as embodied in the Feb. 10 resolution, is hereby denied for lack of merit," the justices ruled.

The prosecution panel, led by Assistant Ombudsman Dennis Villa Ignacio, had claimed that of Ejercito’s P300 million account in the EIB, at least P180 million of these were deposited in the P3.4 billion Jose Velarde account, a fictitious name allegedly belonging to Estrada.