Whither bank secrecy?
| FRONTLINE |
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| Ninez Cacho-Olivares |
Can banks be trusted in ensuring the privacy of bank accounts, especially those belonging to private individuals, rather than ensuring the secrecy of accounts of political allies of an incumbent government?
From the looks of it, that trust between a client and the bank is easily breached — and illegally too, as shown by the photocopy of a check and a bank account number written on it for a deposit of some P150 million said to be the account of Cesar Mancao, who had turned state witness for the Dacer-Corbito double murder. The photocopy of the the check was presented by Sen. Ping Lacson the other day.
For Lacson to have gotten hold of a check and photocopied can only mean that the concerned bank — through an employee or bank official — handed the photocy of the check to Lacson, who is not the account owner and therefore would have no business being given a copy of the check, unless of course, the check’s payor handed this to Lacson which would then open that person up to tax charges, if made to explain how the payor could afford to deposit P150 million in another person’s account.
Lacson had asked the executive director of the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) during a hearing to confirm the authenticity of a P150 million check deposited to the former police senior superintendent who implicated Lacson in the 2000 Dacer-Corbito murder case, even when this was hardly the subject of the hearing..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110820com2.html
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