Geronimo: Confronting the ugly face of disasters
WHILE most of the Philippine business community were, during the first Thursday of this month (May 3), at seminars and conferences of the 45th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Asian Development Bank at the Philippine International Convention Center, in the City of Manila, a few...
Geronimo: The Call of Adrian
IT WAS not the ritual I grew up with. For us, the hoi polloi Tondo, it was outwardly marked by no more than a mere return, particularly by the women, to the wearing of clothes of everyday colours, and by the men, to the resumption of louder laughter and more frequent expletives at which nobody...
Geronimo: One rule for us, another for the big boys
WHEN we lowly folks, not knowing that they are fake, use counterfeit bills to pay our taxes, the Bureau of Internal Revenue through its authorized agent banks, spotting the forgery, correctly rejects our payment. Our taxes remain unpaid; and we are left to our own devices to settle our problem...
Geronimo: The 9th Phil Non-Life Insurance Summit
SOMEBODY up there likes him. Exactly two weeks before Reynaldo A. De Dios is to hold his 9th yearly summit for the region's insurance industry on April 25, 2012 at the InterContinental Hotel in Makati City, an undersea earthquake, described by CNN as "the largest earthquake of its type ever...
Geronimo: Easter on cross by law
ANYONE who has just as much legal brains in his head as Justice Serafin Cuevas has in his little finger is certain to find as objectionable from the legal point of view, the gospels’ allegation that Jesus of Nazareth rose or was risen from the dead.
Geronimo: Barabbas is my hero
SENATE President and Impeachment Court Presiding Officer Juan Ponce Enrile was quoted recently as saying that "the classic case of a wrong survey was the Man on the Cross..." He was reacting to results of Pulse Asia's survey that a significant number of respondents considered Chief Justice...
Geronimo: Corona’s Compensation
LAST week’s revelation at the Impeachment Trial by the defense team of Renato C. Corona of the amounts he had received in the form of salaries and allowances for the period 09 April 2002 to 31 December 2011 was an eye-opener. Not so much because of the amounts, total or itemized, which can...
Geronimo: The real Jerry Leal
WITH no less than the Chief Justice Renato C. Corona stating, during his media blitz last week, that he closed on the day he was impeached his three deposit accounts, amounting to about P37.7 million, with the Philippine Savings Bank (PSB) because he had lost his trust in PSB, the bank’s...
Geronimo: Augmenting the funds of AMLC
PRESENTLY, the Philippines is in the “grey” list of Financial Action Task Force (FATF), or just a shade away from “blacklist.” And if we do not on time, i.e. by June this year when the FATF holds its Plenary session, sufficiently address the concerns raised by the Asia Pacific Group on Money...
Geronimo: Deficiencies of our AMLA
LUCKY for Chief Justice Renato C. Corona, our Anti-Money Laundering Law (R.A. No. 9160, as amended by R.A. No. 9194, or “AMLA”) is severely restricted and not compliant with international standards and best practice, otherwise, he would be in deep you-know-what.
Geronimo: Bank Secrecy is passe'
THAT the Impeachment Court trying the charges against Chief Justice Renato C. Corona was not persuaded to look into the magistrate's dollar accounts at the Philippine Savings Bank was not due to the ineptness of the prosecution nor to the savvy of the defense. Instead, it was due to regime of...
Geronimo: Marcos, not Congress, authored dollar secrecy rule
THE original text of Section of 8 of RA 6426, an act instituting a foreign currency deposit system in the Philippines, relating to the secrecy of bank deposits reads as follows:
Geronimo: The Crux of Article II
PERHAPS, now that more than a dozen days have elapsed and almost everything that could be said have been said about Article II of the Articles of Impeachment against Chief Justice Renato C. Corora, it is appropriate for us onlookers, so as not to lose sight of the forest by reason of being too...
Geronimo: The horrible style of Article II
THE heading of Article II of the Impeachment Complaint against Chief Justice Renato Corona, in all caps and in bold, states: "RESPONDENT COMMITTED CULPABLE VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION AND/OR BETRAYED THE PUBLIC TRUST WHEN HE FAILED TO DISCLOSE TO THE PUBLIC HIS STATEMENT OF ASSETS, LIABILITIES...
Geronimo: Viva Vidal
SUPREME Court Clerk of Court, lawyer Enriqueta Esguerra Vidal, deserves everyone’s congratulations and the country’s gratitude. She demonstrated last January 18th during her testimony before the impeachment court trying the case against Chief Justice Renato C. Corona that she was, in the manner...
Geronimo: Betrayal of Public Trust - Views from the High Court
LOOKING to the decisions so far rendered by the Supreme Court to shed light on the meaning of “betrayal of public trust”, as a ground for impeachment, is not very encouraging. Despite the many cases mentioning the phrase, no decision can be pointed to that fixes its precise metes and bounds...
Geronimo: Betrayal of Public Trust - the framers' intent
SEVEN of the eight articles of impeachment filed against Chief Justice Corona cite as basis "betrayal of public trust". What exactly is "betrayal of public trust"?
Geronimo: En Garde, Grim Reaper
THE loudest noise I could make last New Year's Eve, I directed at the Grim Reaper. Not because at age past retirement, I had, in fact, began to see, as Douglas McArthur termed it, the “deepening shadows of life”. But rather, because the Grim Reaper, for the year 2011, had been doing his thing...
Geronimo: A modern manger of Bethlehem
IT SEEMED like one of the fictional vignettes in the ancient collection of birth narratives of Matthew or Luke. But no, this one is from a contemporary chronicler, the International Herald Tribune, and, I have no reason to believe otherwise, in fact true.
Geronimo: The Fallen Star of David
HE DESCENDED like a shooting star, initially seemingly very slowly approaching according to some preordained trajectory, then soon enough gathering speed upon entry into the atmosphere, and finally as it appeared to be touching the mountain peaks, burning out and exiting the evening stage as...
Geronimo: Confusion amongst Ongpin’s minions
THEY were running like chicken without heads. Because, I suspect, their head was not around to give them direction and orchestrate their specific spiels.
Geronimo: Cracks in DBP's defensive wall
NOVEMBER 14 which was when, at the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee's and Committee on Banks' joint hearing on Development Bank of the Philippines' questionable transactions subject of Senate Resolution No. 555 filed by Senator Panfilo Lacson, former DBP President Rey David was left by his erstwhile...
Geronimo: Fragile Friendship Based on Business
REYNALDO G. David must have been a very sad man last 14 November 2011. On national television, David unabashedly sang peans about his friend, Roberto V. Ongpin, in the course of his testimony at the joint hearings of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and Committee on Banks and Other Financial...
Geronimo: Two friends and Two Rivers
ONE would have thought they were Damon and Phythias; Roberto V. Ongpin and Rey G. David, based on their public statements, were indeed the best of friends; unthinkable, even for a fleeting moment, that one would desert the other, even when the going gets rough and the rough gets going.
Geronimo: What makes insider trading wrong?
THAT the Honourable Roberto V. Ongpin went out of his way to take out a paid advertisement in a major broadsheet last October 13 in order to deny the accusation that he had engaged in “insider trading” when he bought, over time, and then sold to Manny Pangilinan in one shot his block of Philex...
