Senate panel to dig deeper into leakage of Corona bank records

The chairman of the Senate committee on banks, financial institutions and currencies is determined to dig deeper into the leakage of impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona’s bank records to the prosecutors. This was after both the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Philippine Savings Bank (PSBank) both denied being the source of the documents. “The next hearing we can narrow it down, [dahil] hindi naman inaamin ng BSP na sila ang nag-leak, hindi naman inaamin ng PSBank na sila ang nag-leak. So, you know, we got to do more detective work here,” Sen. Sergio Osmena III said in an interview Monday. The next hearing is set on Thursday morning. Osmeña admitted that they are still clueless on how the documents landed into the hands of the prosecutors. “We could not seem to pinpoint how the documents got into the hands of the prosecutors. Hindi namin alam kung galing sa BSP or PSBank.” “Not much of a secret” Current Philippine laws prohibit banks from releasing bank records of depositors, but Osmeña claimed the leaked bank documents of Corona were “not much of a secret,” noting that regular bank tellers may have a copy of signature cards and initial information card. “Signature card is not a secret, as a matter of fact that is available to all teller sapagkat pag kina-cash ‘yung tseke mo ay titignan muna kung [sa iyo ang signature]... That is a very common thing. The initial opening card, the deposit card is not much of a secret item,” he said. He said what is secret are the “contents of the account.” “Ang sikreto sa bangko ‘yung actual amounts na dine-deposit o wini-withdraw ninyo, monthly balance,” Osmeña said. – KBK, GMA News