Brown noses and Senator Trillanes’ offshore bank accounts Posted by chemrock on September 19, 2017 · 199 Comments

By Chemrock

President Duterte announced recently that Senator Trillanes has offshore bank accounts in many countries, details of which he will reveal in time. Right on cue, Ben Tersiona, owner of the website Davao Breaking News, came out with ‘bank documents’ that purportedly showed the various offshore accounts of Trillanes. Radio commentator Erwin Tulfo and Presidential Communications Operations Office Assistant Secretary and one time bartop dancer Mocha Uson jumped in immediately with their own disclosures.

Is Sen. Trillanes yet another trapo that is one-a-penny in the Philippines?

Do Tersiona, Tulfo and Uson represent upright individuals acting on their own out of a sense of public duty or are they nothing more than pawns in a well-oiled propaganda machinery? Or are they simply three brown noses out to please a boss?

A brown nose is an extremely obsequious person.

Obsequious — obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree.

This disclosure of offshore bank accounts of Trillanes needs to be seriously addressed. Trillanes has been riding on his high horses hurling accusations that the President, Presidential son, and Presidential son-in-law, have secret bank accounts used to funnel immense illicit transactions. It is high time we peel away the facade of the crusading crime fighter and reveal his true nature.

DOJ has to set the wheels in motion to fully investigate the claims of the faithful trio. Investigations into foreign bank accounts are extremely difficult although there are some protocols for government-to-government assistance in the case of pursuit of illegally acquired wealth by officials. Much has to do with banking secrecy laws, banks who try to protect their high net-worth customers and themselves. and of course combative and un-cooperative persons under investigation. Ask the Marcoses, they have mastered the art to play the system.

However, here we have a situation where the accused is offering 101% cooperation. Trillanes has signed waivers to banking privacy for each of the accounts he is supposed to have. Don’t we wish the Marcoses too were so cooperative? The PCGG would have wrapped up their cases during Cory’s time had they been given such co-operation. We await anxiously the outcome of DOJ investigation. This should be a walk in the park as the accused has offered absolutely full cooperation.

On the other hand, Trillanes has said he has no such accounts and the bank documents presented are fakes. His claims are equally serious. In the toxic socmed world of the Philippines, the free flow of slanders and fake news from one side of the political aisle is conducted on an organized scale and state-funded. They seemingly appearing as random acts of individuals but in reality often are well orchestrated efforts intended to persuade easily-duped supporters, and to destroy reputations. It is in this light that Trillanes is to be lauded for bringing libel suits against the purveyors of fake news, in this case, the trio of Uson, Tesiorna and Tulfo. Filipinos must be educated that socmed or celebrity power is not a license to kill the reputations of people.

The more discerning people view the President’s claims of knowledge of Trillanes’ foreign bank accounts as noise to divert attention away from the raging public speculation on his son and son-in-law’s possible involvement with triads, drug trade, and corruption at the Bureau of Customs.

TRILLANES’ WAIVERS

Trillanes has signed waivers to banking secrecy for each of the accounts and same has been received by Anti-Money Laundering Commission (AMLC) .

DOJ Sec Aguirre said the waivers are useless “because the offshore accounts are not covered by AMLA”. Many Duterte Die-hard Supporters (DDS) have similarly aired this same point.

In respect of those joint accounts, Aguirre also said “For the bank to honor his waiver, joint depositors must sign a waiver”. This same point has been brought up by DDS. The president has said the same thing.

The standard of legal expertise as reflected here is troubling, both from Trillanes’ legal advisors and the bandwagon of Aguirre, the President, DDS, an presidential lawyer Panelo.

Trillanes most surely had his legal team come up with the format for the waiver. Will the banks comply based on such signed waivers? Absolutely not. For the simple reason they are not addressed to them. Let’s not use the term waiver, it is obfuscating. This is a case of an account holder just trying to make a simple request to his bank to release information to a named party (authorized requester). The request must be addressed to the bank specifically, the bank must be told to whom the information is to be supplied, and the nature of the information must be stated. The information to be supplied may be specific, or it may be open. Specific means particulars as indicated by account holder, open means whatever as requested by the authorized requester. Almost all banks would in fact have their standard forms for account holders to fill out, probably named ‘Authorization to Release Account Information Form’ or something like that. Despite what one may think, it is quite routine.

All those who said Trillanes’ waivers are useless are right. but not for the reasons they indicated. Trillanes erred in form, not in substance. All he has to do now is to get hold of the various bank authorization forms and fill out in favor of AMLC. However, for him to do so, his accusers need to supply him with the proper bank names and addresses, which they never indicated in the disclosures. How else can Trillanes be assured that he is sending the requests to the correct banks, to the satisfaction of the accusers? It is apparent the accusers were never interested in accuracy because there was no factual info, the intent is simply to splash black stains on white linens.

The only reason why Trillanes signed the waivers to AMLC was the unnecessary reference to AMLA. This should have nothing to do with AMLA. The request for release of info form or format as I indicated above, would have satisfied all banks in the world. It has nothing to do with AMLA jurisdiction. In an ordinary situation, Trillanes should have authorized the release of info to DOJ who should have initiated an investigation. Unfortunately Trillanes would not even entrust his pet dog to a hopelessly politicized secretary of DOJ.

There are two types of joint accounts – Joint-tenancy account and Tenants-in-common account. In a Joint-tenancy account, the name holders (called joint tenants) all have equal rights and responsibilities. Anyone of them can operate the account with a single signature. This type of account comes with Rights Of Survivorship, meaning upon the death of one party, the money automatically goes to the other joint tenants, no questions asked. On the other hand, a Tenants-in-common account requires all transactions to be endorsed by all parties concerned. On the death of one party, the money goes to probate.

Bank joint accounts are predominantly of the Joint-tenant type with holders within families for obvious reasons. In such a case, Trillanes’ single signature is sufficient. Tenants-in-common types are rare and very short term in nature (matter of months mostly), mainly used as operative accounts amongst businessmen in a project. Note that Trillanes so-called joint accounts date back to 2013. Those in the bandwagon either have a disgraceful lack of knowledge about joint accounts or this was intended mischief to mislead the masa. It is incumbent on them to know those named joint accounts are Joint-tenant, or Tenants-in-common first, before laying judgment. Or are they used to shooting first before asking?

LIST OF ACCOUNTS

I list this from the waivers signed by Trillanes which I believe he transcribed from the Davao Breaking News website.

1. Country: Geneve – Certainly they don’t mean this is a country? Do they mean the Canton or the City. In English it’s Geneva the canton, with its capital city also called Geneva. UBS and Deutsche Bank accounts are in the City of Zurich, so how is Zurich Branch located in Geneve?

2. Country: Zurich – Just to help them out, I think they mean Canton, not country.

3. UBS is incorporated in the Canton of Zurich, not Geneve.

4. HSBC Singapore does not have a “Raffles Branch”.

5. Trillanes said some of the banks are fakes as there are no such banks. Legally of course he is correct. But I put it down to sheer incompetency in spelling, or pink panther clumsiness on the part of the accuser, attributable to a hastily assembled piece of work. The name errors are :

– Hong Kong Shanghai Bank — do they mean Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation?

– UBS Bank Switzerland — do they mean UBS AG?

– Habib AG Bank — do they mean Habib Bank AG?

– ANZ Bank — do they mean Australia & New Zealand Banking Group?

As for Nova Scotia Bank, mention has been made in socmed about ‘Bank of Nova Scotia’ and ‘Scotiabank’. Here’s my expert info, having worked in the bank long time ago. The correct name is The Bank of Nova Scotia. It operates under the business name of Scotiabank. There is no ‘Nova Scotia Bank’.

One would expect that something of such great bearings, when one is accusing someone of amassing wealth, one ought to be extremely careful with the details. As for names, a suffix of “Plc”, “Ltd”, “Inc”, “SAK”, “AG”, “SA” etc or a prefix of “The”, or a slight change in wordings, could mean an entirely different entity.

6. They do not have the actual addresses of the branches, conveniently placing them as the main branch of the city.

7. The savings accounts in HSBC Singapore and DBS Singapore are SGD accounts. This can’t be correct. There is such a thing called with-holding tax which I’m sure is something those spreading nasty lies are incapable of understanding. Non-resident SGD account holders pay with-holding tax of 15%. Trillanes can’t be that dumb to put his money in a currency earning about 0.5% p.a. and pay 15% with-holding tax. We know Trillanes is one smart guy. The Marcoses had USD23mm there, not SGD, which Singapore courts awarded to PNB.

8. Most banks’ customer boarding procedures require the physical presence of the account opener. Thus a comparison of the account opening dates to Trillanes’ passport would have easily settled all matters. However there are some banks that allow non-residents to easily open accounts without being in the country, Banks in Canada and Switzerland amongst them. But for Switzerland, an apostille on the authenticated copy of the passport is required, and the Philippines not being a member of the Hague Apostille Convention, it means Trillanes cannot open an account by mail. He had to make a trip there. Did he? That’s easily settled by verifying his passports. He certainly didn’t have the kind of wealth like “William Saunders” and “Jane Ryan” to entice Swiss private bankers to fly in to process his account opening.

9. Savings account numbers:

For the Singapore accounts, the codes are incorrect. The number of digits is wrong and the banks’ branch codes are missing.

For New Zealand accounts, the account numbers are standard 16 digits. Wrong again!

For Swiss accounts, all the account numbers do not conform to the IBAN format. Fakes again.

For Canadian banks, Scotiabank and Equitable Bank, branch numbers are not there. Wrong again.

BEN TERSIORNA’S BANK DOCUMENTS

Tersiorna posted on his website Davao Breaking News what he claimed are authentic bank documents and it has to be this posting that Trillanes based his waivers on. I personally have not seen these documents on the DBN website. The site seems to be temporarily unavailable. Tersiorna also posted on his FB account but all the images are no longer available. He now claims FB took down the images as they violate their policy.

FB will only take down those images if there have been mass reports against his postings. There was none. FB has no AI technology that can discern an image as violating their policies. For if it were so, many sexually suggestive images of Mocha Uson would not have surfaced on FB. It is apparent Tersiorna is running tail between legs in the face of Trillanes’ libel suit. He is scrambling for cover, deleting anything that may be considered defamatory.

Whilst he has made the images disappear, he is making further accusations by:

Insisting that the waivers Trillanes signed are not what he posted which were fully verified bank documents. What is the purpose of this claim? To deflect responsibility, and to further insinuate. In black propaganda, details are not necessary. It thrives on nuances, insinuations, innuendos. Truth doesn’t matter.

He made further postings on his FB of purportedly unknown persons transferring money into those accounts successfully, implying those accounts do indeed exist. This is hogwash as I explain below.

Assuming that he indeed defamed Trillanes, in the eyes of an unbiased judge, his non-remorse and further accusations would have made him a recalcitrant, earning him heavier damages.

I may be wrong, but I don’t think Ben Tersiorna is a journalist. At least CNN Philippines has openly declared he is not on their payroll. He thus cannot hide behind the right to protect his source. It will be interesting to find out from whom he obtained his ‘bank documents’ and who was the person who purportedly transferred money into those accounts. Trillanes’ libel suit is in good time. Let’s cut the bs and find out once and for all the truth in the courts.

TERSORNIA’S DOCUMENTS ARE NOT BANK DOCUMENTS

Hard-hitting radio commentator Erwin Tulfo also ‘exposed’ Trillanes bank accounts and he also posted bank documents on his Facebook Account. I am also unable to see these documents on said Facebook. I was able to see said documents on Dailytopmedia.com site which posted the documents taken off Tulfo’s FB, which apparently in turn, were lifted off Ben Tersiona’s websites. These are the images I saw:









If these look like bank documents to you, your name must be Gullible. These perpetrators of fake news are really insulting Filipino intelligence. But that’s the purpose of black propaganda. Just throw anything in there and say you have the proof and 16m will believe you.

Perhaps in Joe’s Comical Phil, a judge may accept that as banks’ documents on Tersiona’s say so. Any judge outside of the Philippines would have flushed those documents down the toilet within one second. But let’s just assume Tersiorna really has authentic bank documents, which he summarized into those images. What can we make of his summaries based on the above images ?

Date of account opening: From where can he see this in a bank document? Statements of accounts do not show this information. For what purpose is the inclusion of the dates here? So that it ties in nicely with the President’s post-fact disclosure of the Trillanes getting dirty money from China during his back-channel communication over Scarborough.

Periodic daily average (3 months) : This implies that he has 3 months statement of accounts. One is in awe at his capabilities. It is impossible to obtain information on balances alone, but he is able to obtain statements of accounts for 3 months. One also wonders how he can obtain statements when, in most cases, Savings Accounts come with a passbook and no monthly statements. (I note the Philippines is an exception).

Remark on accounts: I wonder whose remarks those are. If they are the banks’ remarks then I wonder on what type of bank documents do we see such remarks. I have never seen one in my life, having worked 25 years in banks. Yet more telling is the fact that the banks seem to have similar, almost word for word, remarks. How uncanny. On the other hand, if they are Tersiorna’s remarks, then how can these be banks’ documents? If they are Tersiorna’s remarks, from what type of documents did he obtain the info? There are no routine documents that ever contain such info.

If by authentic bank documents in his possession he is referring to those images above, he is taking everybody for a fool. THOSE ARE NOT BANK DOCUMENTS.

TRANSFER OF FUNDS INTO TRILLANES’ OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS

To further the slander, Tersiorna posted on his Facebook what he called “bank transfer receipts” evidencing transfers of cash into Trillanes’ accounts. That, he said, demonstrated the accounts are real. The remitter’s name is blacked out and Tersiona did not say who gave him the documents.

THOSE ARE NOT BANK TRANSFER RECEIPTS. They are nothing but remittance forms of Taishin International Bank that prove nothing. They do not prove the remitter actually sacrificed by handing over cash to the remittance company. Anybody can get hold of those forms. The tiny rubber chop on the form doesn’t mean anything. To prove cash was handed over, please show Taishin International Bank’s reference number for the remittance. Even if the remitter was a fool and parted with his cash, the law is very clear on this. PROOF OF DELIVERY IS NO PROOF OF RECEIPT. If anything, it shows receipt of money from remitter by remitting agency, it does not show receipt by beneficiary bank and funds applied to accounts. To illustrate, if you were an OFW in Dubai and you handed a fellow OFW returning to Philippines some cash for your family, your friend’s acknowledgement is no proof that your family has received the money. There is a world of difference.

Here’s the joke. Only the beneficiary will know of the receipt into his account. But since Trillanes claims he does not own the accounts, nobody can prove the transfer went through. Brandishing these remittance forms and telling everyone viola here’s the proof is an insult to our intelligence.

Don’t be idiots. There is a simple way to prove the account existence. Show us a bank deposit slip with the bank’s machine print. By the way, don’t date it on a public holiday; don’t repeat the fiasco on Lilia DeLima’s bank accounts.

Here is again the Scotiabank issue. In this form the remitter filled up beneficiary bank as “Nova Scotia Bank” and said it went through, thus the bank is real. This is merely the form filled up by the remitter. The proof is in the pudding and that is in the SWIFT payment executed by Taishin where they would have indicated correctly the beneficiary bank as The Bank of Nova Scotia. I REPEAT, THERE IS NO SUCH BANK CALLED NOVA SCOTIA BANK.

I say they are lying through their teeth and they can’t sue me for libel. This remittance form to ANZ bank is proof. GOTCHA. According to Tersiorna’s ‘bank documents’, ANZ account was closed in December 2016. They managed to deposit cash into a closed account. Geez such bumbling nincompoops.

PANELO ON DUTERTE’S WAIVER

In response to Trillanes’ counter-challenge to the president to bare his accounts, Presidential lawyer Panelo insists Duterte’s waiver to his accounts at BPI is still standing. Is it really still standing and is it the waiver that Trillanes want?

Firstly, DUTERTE NEVER SIGNED ANY WAIVER, period. He signed an SPOA, a special power of attorney for Panelo to obtain certain info from the bank. The SPOA was specific to info, which was simply bank balances, not bank statements. The balances would have shown nothing or small sums if the cuckoo has flown the nest. The SPOA to Panelo means nothing as the latter is an interested party. It is Duterte requesting the bank for info to be given to Duterte. It should be a request addressed to BPI authorizing the bank to release whatever information requested by a named party (an investigating agency).

LET’S STOP THE BS.

CONCLUSION

If Trillanes indeed has those millions, he would be a fool to park them in savings accounts earning pittance. He would do better to learn from fellow Senator Erjecito how to hide and invest the money in offshore trust funds. Offshore bank accounts and offshore investment accounts under trust funds are different animals. Ask Erjecito, ask Imee Marcos.

The inclusion of those Chinese names as joint account holders has only one purpose — innuendo to tie him to people he is supposed to be dealing with. It would do well for those guys mentioned to similarly sue for libel.

Trillanes may have jumped the gun to act against those concerned. He is hitting the marionettes, but the master puppeteer continues to hide his hands. He should have waited till the President himself make public the details of the offshore accounts. We know presidential listings are always in auto-edit mode.

Trillanes’ decision to Sue Sue Sue is a good move, nevertheless. Indeed, the Philippines should put a stop to fake news once and for all. It’s left to be seen how Malacanang will throw the trio lifelines, or perhaps treachery may prevail as, after all, the President has never publicly identified those offshore accounts. Now that Trillanes has the goods on the brown noses, he should rub it in. Only then can the truth prevail — whether we have a trapo politician or 3 brown noses.