Vice President Jejomar Binay having long declared his intention to seek the presidency, it is crucial for him to lay all his cards on the table. He owes the people, his desired constituency, no less. That’s no rocket science, just common sense. That’s why he can’t go around seeing to his many duties as vice president, housing czar, presidential adviser on OFW concerns, president of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines, etc. without being hounded by one accusation that continues to stick: unexplained wealth. It won’t go away until the matter is sufficiently addressed; he can’t keep ascribing everything to pulitika.
It’s strange that this man, known to all and sundry as the master of the schmooze, friend to activists and laborers and nemesis of dictators, as rags-to-riches as they come, and, as hizzoner, famous for dispensing condolences and largesse at every wake in his city, seems not to see this. Can it be that the people around him don’t want him to? His lawyers and spokespersons constantly cry conspiracy. And the members of his political dynasty are hardly helpful; they appear impervious to his possible embarrassment as paterfamilias, or indeed as presidential contender, by turns flashing a sense of entitlement and making inelegant pronouncements as, say, the family would be sure to remember all its bashers when it claims victory in 2016.
The six-month freeze order issued by the Court of Appeals on the bank accounts of the Vice President, his family members and alleged dummies, numbering 242, on the petition of the Anti-Money Laundering Council, has given even the halfway attentive observer serious pause. It’s no longer supposedly disgruntled ex-associates dishing about stalled elevators and engineered bidding, or English gardens in rural Batangas, at hearings conducted by the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee; it’s the AMLC—chaired by the governor of the Bangko Sentral with the heads of the Insurance Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission as members—observing, among other things, “a wide gap between his legitimate income and his total bank accounts.”
The Vice President has since issued a statement declaring the AMLC “definitely wrong” and claiming that he has five bank accounts containing “income and savings before [he] joined the government” as well as income from “decades-old” businesses. Early on, in April, Makati Rep. Abigail Binay said her parents accumulated P630.9 million in the past 27 years: P330 million from the piggery business that her father started in 1994; P14 million from his salaries as a government official in 1986-2013; P4 million from his professional fees as a lawyer; P49 million from her mother’s flower shop business; and P13 million in excess campaign contributions that were disclosed to the Commission on Elections. The congresswoman’s detailing came up short by P220.9 million. Nevertheless, she said her parents’ wealth could be verified in official documents such as the yearly income tax returns and statements of assets, liabilities and net worth.
But in its petition to the Court of Appeals, the AMLC provided certain startling details, including deposits to and withdrawals from the bank accounts that were made almost simultaneously, suggesting that the accounts were “mere conduits.” For example, the AMLC said, in accounts that the Vice President held jointly with his financial adviser Gerry Limlingan, deposits amounted to P29,189,150 and withdrawals to P29,156,189. It appeared that the accounts also served as conduits for remittances to two banks in Canada.
How is the public to consider these worrisome details? Certainly not just smoke and mirrors. Speculation is naturally rife given that Limlingan has made himself scarce since the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee began last year its continuing inquiry into the allegedly overpriced Makati City Hall Parking Building II. So has Eduviges Baloloy, an apparent longtime secretary and confidant of the Vice President who, according to former Makati vice mayor Ernesto Mercado, holds much of the now-frozen bank accounts along with Limlingan. Why? Is this another case of cherchez la femme (in quite another context)? Once upon a time, there was one Yolanda Ricaforte, whose alleged job it was to keep tabs on and to deposit the “jueteng” payoffs made to then President Joseph Estrada. Ricaforte fled the country just before Edsa II ousted Estrada from Malacañang, and is charged with plunder.
The Vice President’s admirers look to him for comfort.