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InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
Chief Justice Renato Corona’s promise to produce details of his foreign currency deposits, not now but in his own time, coupled with the Senate’s 13-10 vote to respect the temporary restraining order issued by the Supreme Court barring any inquiry into Corona’s dollar accounts, have made the public aware of Republic Act No. 6426, a little-known law that guarantees the near-absolute privacy of any foreign currency account held in Philippine banks.
R.A. 6426 provides only one exception, which would allow the secrecy of a foreign currency deposit to be breached, and that is with the written permission of the account holder.
In contrast, Republic Act No. 1405, also known as the Secrecy of Bank Deposits Act and which applies to peso deposits, has several exceptions, the material one being in cases of impeachment such as Corona’s.
Both laws are clear and the Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, thus far has been scrupulously observing the distinct treatment that the secrecy laws have decreed between peso and foreign currency deposits.
The tug-of-war between R.A. 6426, on one hand, and the insistence of the prosecution and the Senate minority to peek into Corona’s dollar deposits isn’t made easier by the comparatively scant jurisprudence on the issue.
Central to the debate are the two cases of Intengan v. Court of Appeals and Salvacion v. Central Bank of the Philippines.
While Intengan lays down the general principle that foreign currency accounts are governed by R.A. 6426 without exception or qualification, Salvacion creates an exception, sort of, from the rigid provisions of R.A. 6426.
We have no choice, therefore, but to examine the two cases side-by-side.
In Intengan, the petitioner was one of three depositors who had dollar accounts in Citibank.
Two high-ranking officers of the bank inveigled the three depositors to invest their money in companies in which the two officers had personal financial interests.
Citibank management discovered the scheme and filed criminal complaints against the two officers for estafa and violation of the conflict-of-interest provisions of the Corporation Code.
To prove its case, Citibank annexed the records of Intengan and the other two depositor’s dollar accounts to its complaint without their consent.
Incensed upon discovering the disclosure, Intengan et al charged Citibank and its officials with a violation of R.A. 1405. Citibank, however, citing jurisprudence, insisted that the disclosure was necessary to prove the crime.
The case wended its way through the judicial system until it eventually reached the Supreme Court, at which time the case, which had not even gone to trial, had been pending for eight years.
Unfortunately for Intengan, the Court held that everyone had overlooked the fact that dollar deposits were involved, so the applicable law was R.A. 6426, not R.A. 1405, and fortunately for Citibank, since eight years had elapsed since Intengan et al discovered the unauthorized disclosure, a time bar had set in.
Intengan has a practical effect on the impeachment.
During Monday’s hearing, Senator Francis Escudero pressured PSBank branch manager Annabelle Tiongson to bring the records of Corona’s dollar accounts so that they could be compared with the annexes in the impeachment complaint to see if the latter are true and faithful reproductions of the originals. It is clear, though, that Tiongson cannot be compelled to do so.
Intengan makes clear that the intent of the disclosure, whether to prove the elements of a crime or to compare copies with originals, is immaterial -- the written permission of the depositor must first be obtained.
Intengan was decided in 2002; it fails to mention, however, the case of Salvacion, which was decided in 1997.
This omission was not the result of a failure in research because Salvacion represented a unique set of facts that could not be applied to Intengan’s case.
In Salvacion, the petitioner was a 12-year old girl who was kidnapped and repeatedly raped by an American who, after being arrested, managed to escape. He, however, left behind dollar deposits in Chinabank.
When the trial court attempted to garnish the dollar account to satisfy the judgment the minor Salvacion won in a civil case, Chinabank refused to cooperate, citing R.A. 6426.
The Supreme Court, however, said that the strict application of R.A. 6426 would be unjust. The Court ruled that while the intent of the law was good when it was enacted, it “failed to anticipate the iniquitous effects [capable of] producing outright injustice and inequality,” which in the case was to leave the Filipino victim of an American pedophile totally without recourse, civilly or criminally, in her very own country.
The injustice, therefore, was clear.
Tellingly, the Court declined in Salvacion to declare R.A. 6426 unconstitutional despite the equal protection challenge hurled against it by Salvacion’s counsel.
This is an important point: R.A. 6426, therefore, stands as the law on the subject.
The question that now confronts the Senate and the Supreme Court is: will an injustice similar in degree in Salvacion arise if the details of the Chief Justice’s dollar accounts are withheld pursuant to R.A. 6426?
