Estrada pals who deposited in Velarde account probed

Several friends of ousted President Joseph Estrada are being investigated for contributing hundreds of millions of pesos to the mysterious Jose Velarde account which prosecutors claim belongs to the disgraced leader.

Ombudsman Aniano Desierto told The STAR that his prosecutors are in the process of questioning Estrada’s friends and asking them to explain their contributions.

He said they are trying to strengthen the evidence already in the hands of prosecutors proving that the ousted president is Jose Velarde and that he owned the Velarde account in Equitable PCIBank which at one time held P3.23 billion.

He acknowledged that Estrada’s recent admission that he signed bank documents as Jose Velarde is a strong addition to such evidence.

Desierto said the Estrada friends being investigated include those whose names came up in voluminous documents turned over to him by the House panel that prosecuted the deposed president in his aborted Senate impeachment trial.

One of those documents is a summary of transactions in Velarde’s Savings Account 0160-62501-5 that was opened at Equitable’s Binondo, Manila branch on Aug. 26, 1999.

Although the account was opened in Binondo, most of the transactions – deposits and withdrawals – were handled by the branch in the Pacific Star building in Makati, where Estrada’s adviser for flagship projects and hostage negotiator, Robert Aventajado, was holding office.

The Pacific Star branch manager, Beatriz Bagsit, was a trustee of the Erap Youth Muslim Foundation which, according to impeachment documents, received P200 million in jueteng money remitted by former Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis "Chavit" Singson.

The summary of transactions, a copy of which was obtained by The STAR, listed businessmen Dante Tan, Lucio Co, Ramon Lee, Jaime Dichaves, Kevin Garcia, Antonio Evangelista, Manuel Pangilinan and Mark Jimenez as among the Velarde account contributors.

Tan contributed P300 million; Co, P233 million; Lee, P218.3 million; Dichaves, P209.7 million; Garcia, P205 million; Evangelista, P40 million; Pangilinan, P20 million; and Jimenez, who is now a Manila congressman, P10 million.

Tan was the majority shareholder of BW Resources, the gaming firm involved in a stock fraud scandal. He and Dichaves, who is said to have lorded it over the telecommunications sector during the short-lived Estrada regime, had fled the country.

The summary lists 18 manager’s checks involving a total amount of P676.5 million whose drawers were still being verified by the House prosecution panel when Estrada’s Senate impeachment trial was aborted.

However, the drawee-banks had already been identified. The 18 checks include one for P182.3 million drawn from the head office of Urban Bank, a Metrobank check for P68 million, a Globalbank (head office) check for P58 million, another for P40 million drawn from Security Bank head office, a Metrobank (Metrobank Plaza branch) check for P43 million, and another Metrobank (Salcedo Village branch) check for P44.9 million.

The Velarde account was opened with an initial deposit of P1. A day after it was opened, tens of millions of pesos was steadily remitted to such account until it accumulated P3,233,104,172.

The summary did not show when the account held that huge amount. The account was closed at Pacific Star branch on Nov. 10, 2000 with the withdrawal of the remaining balance of P111,716.

The STAR sought out Desierto to react on the appeal of Rep. Oscar Moreno (Lakas, Misamis Oriental) for him to establish that Estrada owned the Velarde account through independent evidence by tracing the money trail.

Moreno said there was no doubt in his mind that the ousted president was the owner of the mysterious account.

He said even without Estrada’s admission that he signed bank documents as Jose Velarde, prosecutors can prove that he owned that account.

The deposed president has admitted in a television interview that he signed documents brought to her by then Equitable vice president Clarissa Ocampo at Malacañang.

However, he said he signed only as guarantor of a P500-million loan to his businessman-friend William Gatchalian and that it was Dichaves and some investors who owned the Velarde account.

His spokesman later claimed that Ocampo forced Estrada to sign as Jose Velarde.

Moreno said there were actually three sets of documents on which the disgraced leader affixed the signature Jose Velarde.

One set consists of the investment management agreement between the Velarde account’s owner and Equitable covering funds amounting to P500 million.

Another was a "directional letter" ordering Equitable to invest the money in the form of a loan to Gatchalian. And the third was an authority for Bagsit, the Pacific Star branch manager, to release P500 million.

Moreno was part of the 11-member House panel led by then Minority Leader Feliciano Belmonte Jr., who is now Quezon City mayor, that prosecuted Estrada in his Senate trial.

He and then Makati Rep. Joker Arroyo, now a senator, were the prosecutors who exposed the Velarde account and the several mansions that the ousted president and his alleged mistresses own, including the so-called "Boracay mansion" in New Manila, Quezon City.

The funds used to acquire the sprawling New Manila property came from the Velarde account.