I was out again and I only caught
the end of the live forecast, tuned in a few minutes before the Ombudsman ended
her testimony / PowerPoint presentation but I wished that I saw everything
live, as it has been a while since the trial has been interesting.
82 accounts!? Seriously!?!
I don’t know about you but
without knowing how much cash are actually kept in these dollar accounts, the
fact that he had 82 dollar accounts is just dubious, questionable, suspicious,
(insert term)…
Naysayers by now should know that
whatever spin they try would probably sound (at best) unconvincing. Well, because he had 82 dollar accounts!?! Even
if he just had like $1 each or $100 each in each account, people will still wonder: Why have 82 accounts, if you’re not actually planning to do some money
laundering, ill-gotten wealth stashing or something equally shady like some kiting
type of activity? I mean - 82?! That’s a lot.
Without considering the brouhaha
over his refusal to reveal his PS Bank dollar accounts, 82 is a lot. Back then
only thousands of dollars were rumored to exist, then it was $10M, now apparently its more than that.
So that’s: 1 usd account in 2003 to 82 in 2011. Plus: lots of movements on significant dates such as the 2004 and 2007 elections, and the week of impeachment, including withdrawals and pre-terminations.
What conclusions can we draw here?
AMLC
Cuevas established the Ombudsman as
a hostile witness based on her 1 dissenting opinion over Coronas (“out of the
ordinary”) appointment and subsequently was trying to cross the Ombudsman’s
statements.
From what I gathered based on the
replays I saw on tv, Cuevas was about to question why these accounts were
revealed when the dollar accounts should
have been protected by Foreign Currency Deposit Act and kept asking what the
source of the information was. The
Ombudsman kept telling him that it was from AMLC. And Cuevas kept asking why
she investigated these accounts despite the fact that this particular line of
investigation is not in accordance with the impeachment articles filed.
To which, the ombudsman gave
these answered: “So you are saying these
accounts exist because you are saying it is confidential?” And: “Yes, I am
investigating for (possible) impeachment in December”
The thing is the anti-money laundering
law has been there for years and years. It’s the reason why a normal person
cannot buy all the USD one wants, there is a limit, and if you want to buy more
dollars, you need to present documents to make the transaction possible and
legitimate. Same goes for all dollar bank activities, if they don’t come with
legitimate documents, then $5000 above transactions are flagged as suspicious
transactions.
My point is I’m sure these
transactions are being documented for years. Maybe people just chose to not
look at them back then but they’re there, flagged. It doesn’t take an
impeachment trial for AMLC to suddenly come up with these figures that the
defense has to make a gas lighting accusation that these accounts are not part
of the impeachment articles so why come up with them.
Suppose we look into the articles,
then we can ask: If all these money and accounts are under his name, did he
file it all correctly in his SALN?
AND:"Even if the dollar deposits are confidential under banking rules, didn't the Chief Justice have a duty to report them in his SALN under the rules on public accountability?"
AND so, Corona disputes the “mathematical
equation” used in the Ombudsman’s PowerPoint presentation, which he claims is a
“lantern of lies”.
The highest amount he ever filed,
as reported, was about P3M. So, let’s just all try to do the math
based on that then.
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