By Diego Morra
Make trouble, fail. Make trouble again and get a double whammy. That is exactly what Rep. Chel Diokno first delivered to the brother-sister tag team of Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano and Sen. Pia Cayetano as they clashed on the legality and necessity of issuing subpoena to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to secure the tax records of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio and her husband, Atty. Manases Carpio.
The contentious issue raised by defense counsel Michael Wesley Poa was that the prosecution was engaging in a fishing expedition to buttress the paucity of evidence to pin down Sara for amassing immense wealth inconsistent with her salary as vice mayor and then mayor of Davao City. Sen. Pia Cayetano also raised the precedent in the Harry Stonehill case in 1962 that invalidated evidence obtained illegally. This hit closer to home as it was Chel’s father, the late Sen. Jose W. Diokno, who prosecuted Stonehill. Chel assailed the citation, noting that the subpoena for the BIR records is germane only to the impeachment case of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio.
He then cited Supreme Court (SC) decisions that permitted the issuance of subpoena on tax records. Chel argued that there can never be a fishing expedition when the subjects of the subpoena are specific, having been covered by previous inquiry. Accountability trumps the confidentiality of information. As presiding officer of the impeachment court, Sen. Chiz Escudero granted the prosecution’s request to subpoena Duterte’s bank and tax records, citing the ruling based on the 2012 impeachment trial of then Chief Justice Renato Corona. Covered by the subpoena are Sara and Carpio accounts, the partnership of Carpio Lawyers, and 19 corporate entities.
Chel’s clarification of the Stonehill case stole the thunder from what had been dubbed as the “killer” argument against the issuance of the subpoena on the tax records of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio and her husband as well as the subpoena on at least eight bank accounts of Sara and her husband. Chel told Pia Cayetano that the decision on Stonehill vs Diokno invalidated the general search warrants used by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in searching three Stonehill residences and seizing documents, including the controversial “Blue Book” which contained the names of then President Diosdado Macapagal, Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and other top officials as beneficiaries of millions of dollars in kickbacks. It had nothing to do with the issuance of a subpoena.
Lawyers JP Paredes, Luis Paredes, Philip Paredes and retired Court of Appeals (CA) Presiding Justice Victoria Paredes remember the case only too well since it was their father, lawyer Melquiades Paredes, who won the case for the tobacco magnate Harry Stonehill by arguing the illegality of general search warrants. Indeed, such warrants can be used for fishing expeditions, the fabrication of evidence and the filing of additional criminal charges. Diokno lost the case, and Stonehill was freed from criminal liability, as the pieces of evidence were the “fruit of a poisoned tree.” Yet, Diokno earned the admiration of the nation for his no-nonsense campaign to root out corruption, even if it meant gunning after Macapagal and Marcos (who were still political allies then).
Diokno’s commitment to file charges against the beneficiaries of Stonehill’s largesse ended abruptly after the Macapagal administration deported Stonehiil and announced Diokno’s resignation. There was no such resignation, Diokno declared, and his firing by President Macapagal become a huge black eye on a chief executive who took pride in being the “poor boy from Lubao.” However, the Stonehill scandal was peanuts compared the scams that soiled the nine-year incumbency of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo from the ZTE-NBN broadband scandal, to the election-fixing “Hello, Garci” scam, and a litany of dubious China-funded projects, as well as the irregularities attending supply contracts for the Philippine National Police (PNP), the military and the regular wastage of the funds of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO).
Diokno also gunned after the bank transactions of Sara, her husband, and the accounts already confirmed by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) executive director Ronel Buenaventura to be in her name or jointly with her father and other Duterte family members. He sought Sara’s records from 2007, when she was still Davao City vice mayor. “From 2007 to 2013, according to AMLC records, her financial activity exceeded P3 billion [P3,020,460,347.20],” Diokno said. Poa protested the prosecution’s request, claiming that no financial records of Sara were attached to the impeachment complaint filed before the Lower House.
The SC has already tossed aside the confidentiality of bank records in cases of impeachment, plunder and other high crimes and noted that the tribunal said the rule cannot be invoked to bar such records that are needed in aid of legislation. Thus, Diokno won over Poa and the Cayetanos in their legal tussles, with the defense reduced to whistling in the wind as the House prosecutor secured two major wins to buttress its case of betrayal of public trust under Article 2 of the impeachment case. #
