Polished character

Let us not even talk about the contradictions that impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona lately peddled in media—live, in person, no spokesman, no media releases.

To the guys down here in my barangay, the holes in his story as a hapless harmless persecuted man, even crying unabashedly in public at one time, were so wide and so glaring that, by now, they are as obvious as a hairpiece.

It is just that, according to the Chief Justice, the matching and consistent claims of two members of the Basa family – namely, US citizen Ana and 90-year old Franciscan nun Flory – about the deceit and the bullying (at gunpoint, even) committed by the Chief Justice and wife, Christina, against the entire Basa clan, were all wrong.

In a way, they – and everybody else who tell not-so nice things about him – were lying.

Yet his lawyers would use legalities and technicalities and all sorts of hard-to-understand words just to prevent any of those two “witnesses” from testifying in the impeachment court on the real character of the Chief Justice.

Really, what kind of a man is the Chief Justice? According to Ana Basa, Corona at one time nearly scared her parents to death, even threatening the caretaker of the BGEI [Basa Guidote Enterprises, Inc.] at gunpoint. The caretaker – unfortunately for the Chief Justice – issued an affidavit before he died attesting to the gun-pointing incident.

Is this man, who became the chief magistrate of the land, deserving of the respect of a nation?

All the while, we thought down here that the trial in the Senate was all about finding out the deep-down real character of the accused, thus showing us whether or not he is fit to stay in such an eminent position – not some polished image of him.

No, according to the high-powered defense team of the Chief Justice, whatever we discovered about his character would be useless, for the simple reason that the discovery was just too late. I just do not know if such a legal nicety would instantly convert the man into a saint in the eyes of the public – now and in the future.

Anyway, Ana Basa (actually the daughter of the late Jose Basa III, one of the original stockholders of BGEI) talked about “moral ascendancy” regarding the Chief Justice, which is precisely the whole point of the trial in the Senate. She revealed that her father tried to block the nomination of Corona to the Supreme Court, citing the “injustices” he and wife, Cristina, committed against the Basa clan.

Something perhaps happened at the level of the Judicial Bar Council (JBC), and the protestation of the Basa clan was never even considered in the nomination of Corona by the JBC as associate justice under the cute administration of Gloriaetta.

Moreover, the claims made by Ana Basa could somehow run against the claim of the Chief Justice regarding one possible source of his millions of pesos in cash and property. At one time, he said he borrowed P11 million from the Basa firm – long defunct, at that – to acquire a classy condo in a posh location.

The fact is that all the original stockholders of the Basa company, except the nun, Flory, have passed away. The company could not have given out the loan to the Corona couple. Not legally, anyway.

It was already shown in the trial that the Chief Justice had at least P34 million in cash in three bank accounts as of 2010 under his own name – versus the P3.5 million in his SALN.

Ana Basa noted that the Chief Justice perhaps talked about the “loan” to try to create a scenario: He only put the Basa money in his own bank account, under his name, but it actually belonged to the defunct company of the Basa. Something for his defense!

For that we have a term down here in my barangay: palusot!

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Caught in the boardroom brawl between two big casino guys – Steve Wynn, an American, and Kasuo Okada, a Japanese – was the chair of the state-owned casino operator Pagcor – Cristino Naguiat Jr., said to be a close personal friend of our leader, Benigno Simeon (a.k.a. BS).

Such was the explanation of the Palace to reports on a case filed by Wynn in the United States against Okada, alleging that the latter billeted Naguiat, his wife, their three children and nanny “at company expense in expensive suites at the Wynn Resorts Hotel that cost up to $6,000 a night.”

From what I gathered, as a general practice in hotel-casinos worldwide, that kind of room is never really booked for a fee. Most often than not, they are given – free of charge – to high rollers, dignitaries, and courtesy bookings to representatives of casino operators. No mortal wants to pay for such a room at such a price. That is why the price is outlandish. The host casino-hotel merely uses them to make the guests to feel special. It is good PR at no real cost to the host!

It so happened that Naguiat and his family were booked in such rooms during a conference among casino executives in Macau.

In fairness to him, he did return an expensive designer bag that the host Okada sent to his room for his wife. It is a custom in Japan to give gifts to guests. To a multi-billionaire man like Okada, the price of that designer bag was not even close to the price of a stick of ice-drop to us ordinary mortals. It was just an ordinary gift. Naguiat returned it. I thought it was worthy of praise, not condemnation as some reports tried to project to the public. I wonder why.

Anyway, Wynn was running after Okada, because Okada sued Wynn in the US over Okada’s holdings in the Wynn casino-hotel empire.

You see, Wynn used to own 20 percent of his company, and Okada had an equal 20 percent. Based on reports abroad, when Wynn got divorced, his ex-wife got half of his 20 percent, thus leaving him with only 10 percent. Wynn reportedly tried to oust Okada from the Wynn empire, by having Okada declared by the Wynn board as being “unfit” to be a stockholder of the Wynn company. This declaration was nevertheless not based on any official finding by any US government agency. It was a finding in an investigation report commissioned by Wynn.

As a consequence of being “unfit,” Okada was being forced to sell his 20 percent in the Wynn group back to the company itself – at a huge discount. From what I gathered, Okada’s holdings were worth more than $2.5 billion. The deal offered by the Wynn group was worth less than $1 billion. It was, in other words, a steal for the Wynn group.

There is a book about the enigmatic Steve Wynn, entitled “Running Scared,” written by John Smith, an award-winning newspaper columnist based in Las Vegas. The book claimed that Wynn tried his best to stop its publication, even forcing the original publisher into bankruptcy with multimillion-dollar libel cases, even before the book would come out.

Anyway, the book detailed some alleged ties of Wynn to underground shady characters known in the US as “Mafia.” It revealed that Wynn was deprived of a casino license in London because of a confidential Scotland Yard report on such ties.