Maia Deguito takes her oath prior to the start of the Philippine Senate Blue Ribbon Committee
Bank execs face off at Senate
How $81 million in stolen money ended up in a Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. branch and withdrawn with ease is a question ranking RCBC officials would have to answer as they face the Senate Blue Ribbon committee today.
The committee, chaired by Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, will try to find out who between a branch manager and top management of the bank is telling the truth on the laundering of $81 million owned by Bangladesh Bank and stolen by Chinese hackers from the US Federal Reserve last month.
Guingona said that he wants to know where the responsibility within RCBC lies when it comes to the clearance of withdrawals of huge sums of cash.
“Why did they allow the entry of such a huge amount of money, which was withdrawn with clearances? Because it is impossible that this was done without clearance from the branch manager and higher ups of the bank,” Guingona said.
RCBC’s Jupiter Street branch manager Maia Santos-Deguito and the bank’s president Lorenzo Tan have traded allegations regarding the handling of the funds, which were reportedly laundered through two big casinos in the country after they were withdrawn from the bank.
Deguito argued she followed bank regulations and that the top management of the bank knew all about the transactions.
This early, Guingona said he does not believe the funds were withdrawn without going through the stringent clearance processes of the bank, which he said definitely go up to the top management when the amounts are as huge as the transactions in question.
The $80 million – placed in four separate accounts of $20 million each in the Jupiter branch of RCBC – was withdrawn on Feb. 9.
Sen. Sergio Osmeña III noted that before the withdrawal, the accounts had been dormant since May last year when they were opened.
Osmeña said that it was clear to him that RCBC did not follow the “know your customer” regulations on anti-money laundering when it agreed to open the four accounts without thoroughly checking the owners’ background.
Guingona pointed out that three of the four account holders submitted fake documents such as driver’s licenses.
“There were clearly some shortcomings. The important principle in money laundering is ‘know your customer.’ So you have to know who is the depositor, where does he live and what business is he engaged in,” he said.
“If an employee opens an account with $500 then after a year takes in $20 million, then they should have investigated this. The fact is they did not investigate. It was not reported and the money was taken out,” Osmeña said.
Guingona also noted the CCTV cameras of the Jupiter branch were not working on the day the withdrawals were made.
Invited to today’s hearing were Amando Tetangco Jr., concurrent Central Bank governor and Anti-Money Laundering Council chairman; Teresita Herbosa, chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Commission; Emmanuel Dooc, Insurance Commission head; Julia Bacay-Abad, executive director of the AMLC secretariat.
Cristino Naguiat Jr., chairman and CEO of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. was also invited to shed light on reports that the casinos were used in the money-laundering activities.
Also invited were Deguito; Tan, RCBC president and CEO; Fe Salamatin, head of the RCBC compliance unit; Reynaldo Maclang, president of the Philippine National Bank (PNB); Antonio Moncupa Jr., president and CEO of East West Bank; Nestor Tan, president and CEO of Banco de Oro; Salud Bautista, president of Philrem Service Corp.; Thomas Arasi, president and CEO of Solaire Resort and Casino Manila; Reynaldo Bantug, chairman, president and CEO of Leisure and Resorts World Corp. and the Midas Hotel and Casino; and Clarence Chung, chairman and president of Melco Crown Philippines and City of Dreams Casino.
Businessman William Go, Michael Cruz, Jessie Lagrosas, Alfred Vergara, Enrico Vasquez and Kam Sin Wong (Kim Wong), all of whom were identified as bank account holders in RCBC were also invited to the hearing.
Word war
But even before their Senate appearance, Tan and Deguito have begun a word war in the media.
Lawyer Francis Lim of ACCRA Law who is representing Tan said Deguito’s admission on national TV that she opened an account for Go on orders of Kim Wong showed she committed a serious crime.
“This is a major break in the case and could prove devastating for Deguito because nobody can legally open an account for somebody else. Perhaps realizing she made a huge mistake, she is now saying the specimen signature of Go was not forged,” Tan’s legal counsel said.
Go, through his lawyer Ramon Esguerra, vehemently denied he opened a peso and US dollar account at the Jupiter branch as alleged by Deguito.
Esguerra accused Deguito and an unnamed lawyer of offering his client between P10 million and 20 million to own up to both accounts.
Lim pointed out Deguito has a lot to explain because her admission implies a violation of bank rules and the law as both Tan and Go have contradicted her statements.
Tan had earlier called an “outright lie” Deguito’s claim he knew of the transactions involving the $81 million.
Deguito subsequently said she had “assumed” that Tan knew about it because of the big amount involved.
Deguito’s counsel Ferdinand Topacio said his client is ready to bare everything she knows about the alleged money-laundering scheme when she faces the Senate today.
Topacio earlier said Deguito is being used as a scapegoat in the scheme which “could have not been committed without the knowledge and approval of the bank’s higher management.”
Legal showdown
With such a staggering amount of money involved in the controversy, a showdown among some of the country top-notch lawyers is looming on the horizon.
Esguerra, who served as one of the defense lawyers of former Supreme Court chief justice Renato Corona during his impeachment trial in 2012, is the lawyer of Go.
He was an undersecretary of the Department of Justice and also served as the legal counsel of former Pagcor president Efraim Genuino when he was accused in 2012 of funneling public funds to his daughter’s party-list group. His law firm is Esguerra and Blanco Law Offices.
Industry sources said he is also an owner of an art gallery, Gallerie Immanuel.
Lim, the lawyer of Tan, was former Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) president. Lim is also president of the Shareholders Association of the Philippines.
He is co-managing partner and head of the Corporate and Social Projects Department of the Angara Abello Law Offices (Accralaw), one of the country’s prominent law firms. He is known to be an expert in corporate law.
He is a professor at the Ateneo de Manila University College of Law and at San Beda Graduate School of Law. He is also a professorial lecturer at the Philippine Judicial Academy, an institution primarily in charge of training judges and justices, and lectures for the mandatory continuing legal education (MCLE) program of the Philippine Supreme Court.
Topacio and his client Deguito are members of the Iglesia ni Cristo.
Known as a vocal defense lawyer, he served as lead counsel for former first gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo and former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
He was asked to represent Mrs. Arroyo in a plunder case filed against her and her son, incumbent Camarines Sur Rep. Dato Arroyo in connection with the Libmanan-Cabusao Dam Project. Lawrence Agcaoili, Iris Gonzales
SOURCE: http://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/national/bank-execs-face-off-at-senate/ar-AAgLUFh?li=AA9X5pk