Sealed bank records opened during trial

Chief Justice Hilario Davide, presiding officer of the Senate court hearing an impeachment trial against President Joseph Estrada yesterday opened crucial bank records containing the controversial bank account of a certain Jose Velarde.

This revealed 'Velarde' had an improper or a "privileged" application for a current account at the Equitable Bank in 1999, the third largest bank in the country. But the prosecution immediately said after an initial examination of the documents, which included specimen signature cards and account statements, that the records appeared to have been tampered with.

Prosecutor Romeo Capulong told the court that among the statements supplied, there appeared to be erasures in the balance amounts for the month of October 1999. "In the bank statement for the period Oct. 1-31, 1999, there are entries here that appear to contain erasures in the column under balance," he said.

The documents showed the bank account belonged to one "Jose Velarde", a mystery man without an address, a telephone, an occupation or a nationality. Velarde, who applied for a current account on August 26, 1999, was introduced by GLG, bank records showed, prompting the prosecution and a senator to say it could refer to George Lim Go, whose family owns 30 per cent of the 35-year-old Equitable PCI Bank.

"Mr. Velarde could have been endorsed by Mr. Go, who just resigned as chairman of the Equitable PCI Bank," said Senator Sergio Osmena. Velarde's application for a current account contained only three specimen signatures. He failed to fill up the form to indicate his name, his address, his telephone number, business address, and identification card number. There were no details about his company, its articles of incorporation, and names of business partners.

A second signature card was almost the same as the first signature card, without other data except for the specimen signature of Velarde, and GLG as the endorser of the account. It bore the marking of a dormant account. "The signature looked as if it was recently written," said Romeo Capulong, lawyer of the prosecution.

At the same time, in a 12-page bank statement, the $ 2.8 million (P 142 million) paid by Velarde to Jose Luis Yulo's St. Peter's Holding, which bought a 7,000 square metre lot at 100 11th Street in suburban New Manila subdivision, "appears to have been debited against his account and credited on the same day", according to Capulong.

The said property became the residence of Laarni Enriquez, mistress of Estrada, until October this year, when Estrada was accused by a drinking and gambling buddy of pocketing an estimated $ 8.7 million payoff from gambling lords, and a $ 2.7 million kickback from a $ 4.2 million tobacco excise tax meant for tobacco farmers in northern Luzon.

The type-print on the first page of the Velarde bank statement was radically different from those used in the other 12 pages of the bank statement, said Capulong. Moreover, the stationery used for the bank statement bore the letterhead of Equitable-PCI, while the two specimen cards containing the signature of the account-holder bore only the name Equitable Bank, not Equitable-PCI. The two banks merged this year.

Velarde's account was made at the Equitable-PCI Bank in Manila's Binondo, the country's China town. Earlier, the president's friend, businessman Jaime Dichaves, claimed he was the owner of the controversial bank account holder. Sources who succeeded in getting a specimen of the signature of Dichaves found that it did not match Velarde's specimen signature at the bank.