Lawyer nominates BIR commissioner to CJ post

A lawyer nominated on Thursday Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Commissioner Kim Henares for chief justice.

Jose Mejia, regular member from academe of the Judicial and Bar Council ( JBC), said Henares was nominated for chief justice by lawyer Elpidio Jamora Jr.

Henares said she is honored to be nominated for the top Supreme Court post but has yet to decide if she would accept or decline the nomination.

She would first discuss the matter with President Aquino before making a decision.

Henares said she learned about her nomination yesterday morning from Jamora.

“It’s an honor to be nominated but I have to think about it. I have until June 18 to think about it,” Henares

told The STAR.

Henares is reportedly one of the SC “outsiders” being considered by the President to replace ousted chief justice Renato Corona who was convicted by the Senate impeachment court last May 29.

The BIR chief was a key witness in the impeachment trial and is currently leading a probe into the alleged tax

deficiencies of Corona and his relatives after getting the former chief justice’s waiver on secrecy of bank deposits.

The President had reportedly said that Henares and Justice Secretary

Leila de Lima are both qualified to be the chief justice because they are the two “most feared” members of his Cabinet. But Aquino was later quoted as saying that the two officials could be more effective in serving the government in their current posts.

Henares is facing contempt charg- es before the SC for defying the temporarily restraining order on the tax coverage of the P35-billion worth of the controversial Poverty Eradication

and Alleviation Certificates (PEACe) government bonds.

The SC had issued the show cause order against her and Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima on Nov. 15, 2011 for their refusal to honor the TRO issued on Oct. 18 that same year and the BIR proceeded to collect the subject 20-percent final withholding tax on the bonds that matured on the same day.

Henares finished her Bachelor of Sci

ence in Commerce major in Accounting degree at the De La Salle University.

She was admitted as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in 1981.

She is also a lawyer, graduating with the Second Honor Medal at the

Ateneo de Manila University. She also holds a Master of Laws degree major in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown University in Washington.

Prior to the BIR, Henares worked as a tax lawyer at SGV & Co., was a partner at the Yap Jacinto Jacob Law Office, vice-president for corporate and legal affairs of ING Bank, gover

nor of the Board of Investments and Senior Private Sector Development Specialist for the World Bank Group.

Henares said that she would have to carefully consider the matter because as BIR chief, she is in the middle of implementing a host of reforms in the tax agency.

“We have a lot of projects in the BIR,” she said.

Under her leadership, the BIR has

been regularly filing tax evasion cases at the Department of Justice under the agency’s Run After Tax Evaders program.

The name-and-shame anti-tax evasion campaign has been going after both small and big-time delinquent taxpayers in a bid to show the public that the BIR is serious in implementing the country’s Tax Code.

Henares was a crucial witness for the prosecution in the impeachment trial of Corona.

Her testimony centered on Corona’s declared income. She said

Corona never filed income tax returns from 2002 to 2010.

She also testified that Corona’s wife acquired an P11-million property in La Vista, Quezon City in 2003 despite having no reported source of income. – With Iris Gonzales, Delon Porcalla