By JOSEPH HOLANDES UBALDE
Interaksyon.com
OMBUDSMAN Conchita Carpio-Morales said Tuesday her office may file a second impeachment case against Chief Justice Renato Corona should the magistrate be acquitted in the ongoing trial by the Senate.
“I don’t see any reason why there is no chance for me to file…if that is warranted,” the Ombudsman said when pressed by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago if she would exercise that power.
The Ombudsman Act vests in the Ombudsman disciplinary authority over all elected and appointive officials of government, except over officials who may be removed only by impeachment and over members of Congress and the judiciary. But his or her investigatory power is for the purpose of filing a verified complaint for impeachment.
Carpio-Morales, who was presented by the defense as a hostile witness, revealed in a Powerpoint presentation on Monday that Corona had about $12 million deposited in 82 bank accounts as of December 2011.
She said she based the figure on a 17-page document detailing Corona’s dollar deposit transactions furnished by the Anti-Money Laundering Council from whom she had sought help in probing charges of unexplained wealth filed by the group of former party-list Rep. Risa Hontiveros.
Corona is being tried by the Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, on allegations of betrayal of public trust and culpable violation of the Constitution, including his supposed failure to fully disclose his assets in the annual Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth. There is a one-year ban on the filing of impeachment complaints.
Taking the witness stand again on Tuesday, Day 38 of the impeachment trial, Carpio-Morales was pointedly asked by Santiago if she would file a case on December, a year after the first impeachment case was filed by the House of Representatives, to which the Ombudsman answered yes.
“I must only abide by what the Ombudsman law provides,” she said.
She said it was also within the Ombudsman’s power to file civil forfeiture cases.
Santiago, however, assailed Carpio-Morales for acting “more powerful than the President” after obtaining confidential information from the AMLC on the chief justice’s dollar accounts in connection with the Ombudsman’s investigation.
Santiago said Carpio-Morales defied the rules set by law when told the AMLC to probe the alleged ill-gotten wealth of Chief Justice Renato Corona.
“Under the law, you have to go to a judge, you have to get an order from a judge to get the bank accounts… Di nya sinunod yun. At ipinipilit nya na may ganoon syang kapangyarihan (She didn’t follow that and insists that she is empowered to do so),” she said.
Santiago added, “Sa kanyang interpretation, walang limit ang kanyang powers. Ang sinasabi ko, ‘Of course not (Based on her interpretation, there is no limit to her powers. I say, ‘Of course not). Dahil magiging mas makapangyarihan pa sya sa Presidente o sa Senate President o sa Speaker of the House (Otherwise, she would be more powerful thatn the president, the Senate president or the Speaker of the House). She will be the most powerful person in the country!”
At one point, while questioning Carpio-Morales, Santiago lost her temper when the Ombudsman kept “arguing with the senator-judge” regarding her exercise of powers.
“You’re arguing with a senator-judge!” Santiago said.
“Mea culpa (my mistake),” Carpio-Morales quickly replied.
“Apology accepted,” Santiago said.
When asked about her heated exchange with the Ombudsman, Santiago revealed that the two of them are actually “friends” and are contemporaries from the University of the Philippines College of Law.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Carpio-Morales asserted that while the AMLC report may have been too technical for her, she understood it well before presenting it before the Senate impeachment court.
She was reacting to lead defense lawyer Serafin Cuevas’ insinuation that the 17-page AMLC report was “beyond her comprehension.”
“‘Beyond my competence yes, beyond my comprehension no,” a stern Carpio-Morales told Cuevas.
The Ombudsman admitted that she got the help of the Commission on Audit in interpreting some details of the AMLC report, but stressed that she was hands-on in preparing of the 25-slide PowerPoint presentation she showed the Senate on Monday.
“I asked (COA) to visualize (the information)…I was personally involved,” Carpio-Morales said.
Cuevas also asked Carpio-Morales whether she ascertained the accuracy and credibility of the AMLC report.
“Are the contents of that report are correct and in accordance with law? I wouldn’t know,” Carpio-Morales said, explaining it was beyond her means to verify the report.
But she added, “Again, I say the presumption is that they (AMLC) will provide me the right information.”
The prosecution’s Mario Bautista objected to Cuevas’ line of questioning and cited the Rules of Court that any report officially prepared by a government agency is ascertained as truthful and can be accepted as prima facie evidence.
Earlier, defense lawyer Jose Roy III said while he doesn’t question the authenticity of the AMLC report he doubts whether it gave the entire picture.
“I’m not sure, however, if what she presented is everything that AMLC reported. Secondly, this is obviously raw data. You’ve seen the documents; we cannot make heads or tails out of it. I’m sure when the Ombudsman received it, she didn’t know either,” he said.
When asked, however, whether the revelations of the Ombudsman was according to their plan, Roy said, “Did it go according to plan? Well, it went according to plan, but not ours.”
The defense team admitted that they were caught off guard by the evidence presented by Carpio-Morales on Monday.
Defense team’s spokesperson Tranquil Salvador III also admitted that they weren’t expecting Carpio-Morales’s assertions in her presentation.
“Ang problema hindi namin sya na prisinta sa paraan na napaghandaan (The problem was we weren’t able to present it in the way we prepared it),” he said.
Roy asserted that the alleged 82 bank accounts owned by Corona was simply “mind-blogging” and couldn’t have been possible.
“Do you know of anyone with 82 bank accounts?” he said.
But what the defense was not surprised to find out, according to Roy, was how far the evidence against Corona would be unearthed, regardless if this was truthful or not.
“This case began without evidence,” Roy said. ”Now we are in a long fishing expedition to get evidence.”
Roy said defense lawyers met with Corona on the AMLC report “for a good part of the day” and the chief justice remains optimistic on how the trial is going on so far.
“When we parted ways he was in very high spirits,” Roy said adding that the magistrate is still keen on testifying before the Senate impeachment court “when the time is right.”