A BANK official stood by his earlier statement that the bank documents of Chief Justice Renato Corona, which were attached to the verified complaint, did not come from their office.

At the resumption of the impeachment trial, PS Bank president Pascual Garcia was called anew to the witness stand to answer queries of the senator-judges on the bank documents that came into the hands of the prosecution team.

According to Garcia, the documents presented by the prosecution panel are different from their copies because these do not bear “politically exposed person” tag.

“That is a glaring difference. In our document the mark PEP is not found but in the Annex copy there is. That document did not come from us,” Garcia said.

AMLC audit

He recalled that sometime between September and November 2010, the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) conducted internal audit of the accounts deposited to the banks.

Garcia confirmed that Corona’s accounts were one of those that were subjected to the audit.

The bank official even said that it was the AMLC who informed the bank that the PEP tags were missing in the bank records especially in the specimen signatures.

Under the Anti-Money Laundering Law, the PEP tag should be placed on the specimen signature of elected and appointed officials of the government and those holding high position.

The senator-judges pursued the source of the bank records of Corona from PSBank to determine how these came into the hands of the prosecution team.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile ordered Garcia to bring to the next hearing a copy of documents submitted to AMLC and BSP to compare them with the documents in the prosecution’s possession.

Support for Banal

Around 100 lawmakers, led by House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. and Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II, trooped to the Senate to show support for Quezon City Rep. Jorge “Bolet” Banal as he answered questions from the senator-judges.

This prompted the House of Representatives to only have open-close session yesterday, without tackling any agenda.

Banal’s involvement in the impeachment trial was mentioned by witness PS Bank Branch manager Annabelle Tiongson when the former visited the branch and asked some verification of a certain foreign bank account.

In his statement last week, Banal admitted visiting the PS Bank Katipunan branch and seeking the help of Tiongson to verify a dollar account allegedly owned by Corona.

According to Banal, the document was only inserted in the gate of his house on the eve of January 31. He said he wanted it verified first before presenting it to his colleagues in the prosecution panel.