THE camp of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno on Sunday rejected her critics’ comparison of her case to that of the late Chief Justice Renato Corona who was removed by the Senate sitting as an impeachment court.
The Senate removed Corona after finding him guilty of violating the law governing the statements of assets, liabilities and net worth by government officials.
Sereno’s lawyer Jojo Lacanilao said while Corona’s ouster after the impeachment trial was based on the issues involving his SALN, it could not be compared with Sereno’s case.
He said Sereno was not being charged for not declaring her income or for graft and corruption unlike Corona.
Corona himself admitted he had about P183 million in peso and dollar deposits that were not reflected in his SALN.
“We have to remember that CJ Corona himself admitted that he had $2.4 million and his defense centered on his interpretation that he was not required to declare his dollar deposits because of the confidentiality of foreign accounts under the Foreign Currency Deposit Act,” Lacanilao said in a statement.
He recalled that Corona also did not declare P80 million in local currency deposits as he claimed the funds were commingled, mostly belonging to his children and his wife’s family corporation, the Basa-Guidote Enterprises Inc.
“One cannot draw parallels between the two chief justices because their cases are entirely different from each other. The difference is monumental,” Lacanilao said.
The petition of Solicitor General Jose Calida cited Sereno’s non-submission of the required SALNs to the Judicial and Bar Council during her application for the top judicial post in 2012 as a basis for asking the Court to invalidate her appointment.
But in the impeachment case against her in the House of Representatives, the Chief Justice is accused of non-declaration of her over P30-million income from the arbitration case against Philippine International Air Terminals Company Inc., the builder of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal III.
Lacanilao said Sereno had fully declared everything in her SALNs.
“From 2010, when she was first appointed to the Supreme Court, all the way up to her latest SALN, Sereno has faithfully complied with all the requirements in the SALN law,” he said.
Contrary to the claim of the impeachment complainant Lorenzo Gadon that she received P37 million from the Piatco case, Sereno was only paid 30.3 million before taxes for the legal services rendered from 2003 to 2008, Lacanilao said.
The remaining amount after taxes had been spent over time for various asset acquisitions and investments, which were all reflected in Sereno’s current SALN. The rest went to the family’s tithes, offerings, living and medical expenses and other operating expenses.
Besides, Lacanilao said, the SALNs were only relevant to the question of integrity if the issue was ill-gotten wealth.
“There is no allegation in the petition that the Chief Justice has any such ill-gotten wealth, he said.
The camp of Sereno has announced that they had already recovered 11 of her 21 reported missing SALNs.
They said nine of Sereno’s UP SALNs had been recovered aside from the 2002 SALN found in her files at the university administration office and her 1998 SALN that is with the Office of the Ombudsman.