MANILA -- Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said the bank secrecy waiver signed by Senator Antonio Trillanes IV for all his bank accounts is useless, stressing that these cannot even be scrutinized by the Anti-Money Laundering Council.
"The waiver of Trillanes is useless because offshore accounts are not covered by AMLA (Anti-Money Laundering Act) and therefore the AMLC (Anti-Money Laundering Council) cannot run after those. It appears that he has a co-depositor. For the bank to honor his waiver, both depositors must sign a waiver," Aguirre explained.
On Monday, Trillanes, a known critic of the administration, signed a bank secrecy waiver and showed it to the media after he was accused by President Duterte of having bank accounts abroad which allegedly contain his hidden wealth.
He challenged President Duterte to sign a waiver that will allow the public to see his bank accounts allegedly containing billion of pesos.
Over the weekend, the President threatened to expose Trillanes' foreign bank assets after the senator implicated his son Davao City Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte and son-in-law Atty. Manases Carpio in smuggling.
The senator's supposed 12 bank accounts circulated on social media through the page of broadcast journalist Erwin Tulfo, the blog of Presidential Communications Operations Office Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson and Davao Breaking News, a page allegedly maintained by a certain Ben Tesiorna.
Earlier, the Coalition for Investigation and Prosecution led by former Manila councilor Greco Belgica revealed that Senator Trillanes also involved in the corruption in connection multimillion-peso pork barrel funds he received during the previous administration
Belgica and Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) founding chairman Dante Jimenez cited records from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) showing questionable expenditures from the opposition senator's Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) funds.
The documents, which were submitted to the DOJ, showed that Trillanes has received a total of P245 million in DAP funds in three tranches (PHP100 million, PHP50 million and PHP95 million).
The group's investigation showed that the senator donated PHP10 million from his DAP funds to a non-government organization that allegedly turned out to be a donor and not recipient of donations.
Belgica further bared that Trillanes used a "very unique scheme" where he distributed his DAP funds to smaller projects.
"These (pieces of) evidence against Sen. Trillanes are enough to pursue cases against him. But we want the DOJ to further investigate and validate and it would be up to them if they would pursue separate cases against him," Belgica explained.
The Coalition for Investigation and Prosecution has already submitted the evidence to the DoJ to conduct investigation for the possible filing of criminal charges against former President Benigno Aquino III and two other former officials in connection over the alleged anomalies in the multibillion-peso DAP.
Belgica said that they submitted to the office of Justice Secretary Aguirre records of the DBM on the DAP expenditures during the Aquino administration.
"We were also able to gather information from several witnesses showing various anomalies in the DAP," Belgica, an anti-pork barrel advocate who petitioned the Supreme Court (SC) to stop the PDAF during the previous administration, told reporters during the press conference in Manila.
Belgica also asked the DOJ to conduct a fact-finding investigation on the submitted records, which showed a discrepancy of P2.6 billion from the DAP spending, and pursue cases of malversation of public funds with aggravating circumstances against Aquino, former DBM secretray Florencio Abad and former DBM undersecretary Mario Relampagos.
The documents also showed that PHP6.5 billion from the PHP144-billion DAP funds of the previous administration was allocated to various local projects that were not itemized in the budget, he further revealed.
He explained that the evidence they gathered were a result of years of investigation as part of their advocacy against pork barrel system in government.
The former councilor disclosed that the anomalies include ghost projects funded by DAP, citing for instances projects involving lampposts and bridges that were given DAP funds but were not actually built upon verification.
He also cited the reported admission of detained former Senator Jinggoy Estrada that they were given DAP funds for the ouster of the late Chief Justice Renato Corona in impeachment trial in 2011.
For his part, Edward Bringas, lawyer of the coalition, said that the cases against the authors of the DAP can now be pursued due to the official documents from the DBM and statement of witnesses.
"The earlier complaint filed before the Ombudsman was based only from general information. This time we can expect to build up stronger cases," he explained.
To recall, the Ombudsman cleared Aquino and junked the technical malversation charges against Abad last March and instead filed usurpation of legislative powers against the former budget secretary.
A coalition of anti-pork barrel groups decided to submit the evidence to DOJ showing misuse of the DAP funds, which the Supreme Court had voided and declared unconstitutional.
The DOJ has created a team led by Undersecretary Antonio Kho Jr. to conduct the fact-finding probe and build-up of possible cases. (PNA)
