Bank accounts up next in boring, boiling trial

The Porsche driven by Customs clerk Paulino “JJ” Elevado in chasing and shooting at another car is not registered in his name. So says the agency chief Rufino Biazon in checking Elevado’s lifestyle. Biazon wonders how a mere clerk who makes P9,646 a month can afford an P8-million speedster. That’s easy to explain in a flagship of corruption called Customs. Even a janitor at the head office has four cars and SUVs, and struts around with a handgun.

Most buyers of luxury vehicles who wish to hide it register it in the name of the dealer. The dealer then executes a blank deed of assignment or of sale. When timely, like upon leaving government service, the owner transfers the registration to his name or to close kin.

Graft investigators would do well to verify if Elevado employed the modus in the case of the Carrera-4 model with license plate JOE 911. To pinpoint that Porsche’s beneficial owner, they can review the maintenance records, like who paid for the periodic checkups. Neighbors can also attest if they saw the car often in their community.

The Porsche was used in crime: attempted murder and physical injuries. It should be turned over to the police, who will likely test-drive it for fun. Whoever shrieks the loudest in protest of such turnover (as with the mothers fighting over an infant in Solomon’s court) would be the Porsche’s true owner.

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Judging from waning attendance and televiewership, the public is getting bored with Chief Justice Renato Corona’s impeachment trial. But newsmen expect it to boil again this week, on the issue of bank accounts. The prosecution is pressing to subpoena Corona’s deposit records in two banks. The defense vigorously is opposing it as irrelevant to the case at hand. Senate court presiding officer Juan Ponce Enrile has ordered the prosecutors to justify the need to show them as evidence. Senator-judges are keen to not let this look like the contentious second envelope in President Joseph Estrada’s similar trial 11 years ago. To recall, suppression of that sheaf of documents triggered mass actions and his ouster.

Three participants in that 2001 event — Enrile, Tito Sotto, Miriam Defensor Santiago — recount it in different contexts. They have a common thread, though: public impression.

Enrile, before Corona’s trial began, had said he would not tolerate a walkout by prosecutors like in 2001. In that earlier trial, the prosecution had wanted the senators to open a belated envelope of bank papers that supposedly would prove graft. Erap’s counsels resisted, insisting that court rules forbade evidence-fishing expeditions. Apparently neither side knew the envelope’s contents, and argued purely on legalisms. A vote was taken, with ten senators accepting the evidence, but 11, including Enrile, rejecting it. The public took it as stifling the truth, a perception worsened by the prosecutors leaving the courtroom dejected. Enrile’s antidote against a rerun of such scene is a public assurance of fairness in today’s proceedings. He carefully is balancing the acts of the accusers with the rights of the accused.

Sotto, one of the 11 rejecters of the envelope as well, says they all later decided to open it. Surprise: the contents turned out to refute the prosecution’s claim of graft, and bolster Estrada’s defense. But it was too late. People already were marching in the streets, denouncing the trial as rigged to absolve Erap of an alias “Joe Velarde” bank account. The 11 were demonized as “JOE’S COHORTS,” from the first letters of their surnames.

Being once a trial judge, Defensor-Santiago is the most experienced in court proceedings among the senator-judges. Also one of the 11 rejecters in 2001, she says the envelope’s contents vindicated them in the end. Still, Estrada’s trial was never concluded; the people rendered a verdict in the streets. Lessons learned, Defensor-Santiago says: cut the legalisms, and use commonsense in accepting and evaluating evidence. Doing all this would speed up the trial.

The records being sought for subpoena by Corona’s accusers seem not to be surprises for them. They point to seven dollar-account numbers in one bank alone. Supposedly one of these had $700,000 (P30 million) in initial deposit; another is in the names of kin but with Corona as sole signatory, making it a prohibited alias account. All did not appear in his annual Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth. This supposedly would buttress their case of culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust in under-declaring and non-disclosure of his SALNs. Earlier they had shown condos and real estate to be undervalued in the SALNs compared to actual purchase prices, as well as late declaration of some of these.

The defense cries foul. It says the accusers are trying to show ill-gotten wealth even though this is not adduced, hence immaterial, to the Article of Impeachment. Corona supposedly is being demonized to make the public conclude guilt this early. The defense is likely to make an issue too of how the prosecutors got hold of information on the bank accounts. Reportedly it came from an anonymous source, so how could they be so sure about the unverified $700,000-initial deposit.

And so, up for hot decision by the senators would be whether to lift bank secrecy for this impeachment trial.

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