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Chief Justice Corona admits having $2.4M in dollar accounts


(Updated 4:40 p.m.) Chief Justice Renato Corona on Friday admitted he has $2.4 million in savings, saying the money grew from the interest yield over the years.
 
"Mahigit kumulang po $2.4 million [ang dollar savings ko], pero gusto ko po ipaliwanag na ‘di po ‘yun pinasok sa bangko na $2.4 million," Corona told the impeachment court. 
 
He made the admission while Senate Minority Floor Leader Alan Peter Cayetano was posing clarificatory questions to the chief justice during Friday's trial. In her testimony as a hostile witness last week, Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales had said that according to records from the Anti-Money Laundering Council, Corona had $10-$12 million in transactional balances in 82 accounts from 2003 to 2011.
 
Last Tuesday, Corona said his family had been investing in foreign exchange for a long time. For this venture, he said he maintains four dollar accounts–one with Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), one with Allied Banking Corp., and two with the Philippine Savings Bank.
 
He said his family started collecting dollars in the late 1960s, when the dollar exchange rate was almost P2 to $1.
 
"Yun pong panahong ‘yun ay nasa private sector naman po ako nun. Wala po ako sa gobyerno," he said Friday.
 
"Nung una akong bumili two-is-to-one, tapos… naging 3.80 or tapos naging four, tapos naging floating rate… I think mga 5.90 and so on and so forth.  We're talking here of more than 35 years. Kumikita ng interes ‘yan," he added.
 
He explained that the money grew partly because they rarely spent the interest it was earning.
 
"Hindi po kami mahilig sa sosyalan, kaya there was hardly any time na nagalaw namin ‘yun interes kaya parati pong nagco-compound," he said.
 
"Napaka-simpleng simple ang buhay namin... meron naman akong current stream of income na ginagasta namin pang-araw-araw," he added. He said they did not pay for rent or mortgage for 45 years because they were living in his family's ancestral home. Interpretation of the law
 
In his statement Tuesday, Corona said he did not declare the dollar accounts in his statement of assets, liabilities, and net worth (SALN) because these are covered by Republic Act 6426 or the Foreign Currency Deposit Act.
 
"Ang pagkakaintindi ko po… ay di kailangan ideklara ang US dollars... This is an absolute rule," he said.
  
"Certainly I should not and cannot be penalized for abiding and relying on the letter of the law. The inaccuracies in my SALN do not constitute an impeachable offense," he added.
 
Cayetano, however, wondered whether this would convince more government officials to hide their money in dollar accounts. 
 
"If that's the interpretation of the chief justice, wouldn't that interpretation harm the main purpose of the SALN law?" he said on Friday.
 
Corona said he had started investing in dollars even before RA 6426 was enacted.
 
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, for his part, said it was not the Senate's function to elicit opinion or interpretation of laws. —VS, GMA News
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