Impeachment court lectures prosecutors
Senators find testimony of SEC official irrelevant
DAY 10 of the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona turned out to be another disaster for House prosecutors.
Senator- judges on Wednesday described as “irrelevant” the testimony of an official of the Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC) on millions in cash advance made by Corona years ago for property acquisitions of the Chief Justice.
Worse, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, also the presiding officer of the impeachment court, gave the prosecution team and its witness lessons in corporate law.
On the 10th day of the Corona impeachment trial, the House prosecutors presented Benito Cataran, the director for company registration and monitoring department of the commission, and the 11th witness of the House prosecution team in the impeachment proceedings against Corona.
Testifying before the Senate impeachment court, Cataran revealed that the certificate of registration of Basa-guidote Enterprises Inc. has been revoked since 2003 and has thus been dissolved as a company.
He said that the company’s last general information sheet and financial statement were filed in 1990 and that he then ordered on April 22, 2003 the revocation of the company’s certificate of registration.
According to House prosecutor Reynaldo Umali, Cataran was put on the witness stand to question the truthfulness of Corona’s statements of assets, liabilities and net worth, which showed an P11-million loan from Basa-guidote that was used
to pay for the chief magistrate’s property purchases.
But the senator- judges raised a legal question about the capability of a firm to still provide a cash advance even if its registration has been dissolved.
Enrile told Umali that a revocation of the license of a company is different from the dissolution of the company.
He said that a company can only be dissolved via its stockholders or through quo warranto proceedings.
“The SEC can’t kill. You can revoke, but you can’t let it die,” Enrile pointed out.
Cataran explained that when a corporation fails to file an appeal on the revocation of license, “its existence has become null.”
But Enrile refuted Cataran and ordered the witness to explain the rationale behind such understanding of the Corporation Code by submitting to the impeachment court a legal memorandum.
The year of the revocation of the license – 2003— was the same year that Corona filed in his wealth statements the P11-million cash advance from the corporation.
Sen. Loren Legarda also questioned Cataran but he said that he could not say whether the corporation was still in operation when the Chief Justice made the cash advance.
“We can’t say whether it’s still in operation because they are not submitting reports,” Cataran explained.
Legarda then directed her question to Umali, inquiring whether there was a connection between the corporation and Corona’s alleged failure to disclose his wealth statements.
Umali said that the prosecution suspected that there was no transaction made between the corporation and the Chief Justice “because the corporation has already been dissolved or revoked.”
Sen. Pia Cayetano said that many senators already feel that