Will keep secret?

This is now the big questions to the guys in my barangay: Will the Senate issue a subpoena to PSBank, a thrift bank in taipan’s George Ty’s Metrobank group, the largest financial conglomerate in the country today?

Just the other day (Tuesday), the prosecution panel in the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona officially asked the Senate to order PSBank to send “authorized officers” to testify in the impeachment. The prosecution specifically asked for the “specimen signature cards” connected to accounts in PSBank under the name Renato Corona, including the monthly bank statements.

I gathered that, based on the request for subpoena, a certain Renato Corona won—in a raffle done by PSBank about four years ago—a handsome amount of P1 million. Qualified to join the promo were the depositors of the bank. Apparently, the prosecution panel lifted the name “Renato Corona” from the official list of winners in the bank promo. Obviously, the specimen signature cards should indicate whether or not the “Renato Corona” who is a depositor of PSBank is the Chief Justice.

For some time now, word goes around in business that a dollar bank account in PSBank was opened about four years ago under the name of one of the Chief Justice’s children, with an initial deposit of $700,000—or about P30 million.

That the winner in the PSBank promo was a certain “Renato Corona” should make this episode in the impeachment all the more intriguing.

As I said, PSBank belongs to the group of taipan George Ty. The Megaworld group of taipan Andrew Tan also surfaced in the impeachment, in connection with the penthouse allegedly bought by the Chief Justice from Megaworld. Other big names may surface as the trial progresses.

Now, in court cases involving bank accounts, the 60-year old Bank Secrecy Law (RA 1405) always comes into play. It is against the law for banks to reveal the name of a depositor or, for that matter, any information related to the deposit. Still, the Supreme Court itself already established certain exceptions to the rule. Among them were court cases involving graft and corruption among public officials. Indeed the law was not originally meant to protect crooks.

Way back in the 1950s when the law came into being, the authors actually intended to encourage people to put their money in the bank, instead of under the bed, and to protect the rich who at that time chose to bring money out of the country. Originally, in other words, the law was designed to stimulate domestic savings. It is just that some people use it to cover their tracks, so to speak.

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For one of the country’s highly profitable banks, the listed Security Bank Corp., nicknamed SECB on the stock market, whose market price has gone up by a third in the last three months, it must be a pretty busy week.

The other day, the bank launched its LTCND, or the “long term certificates of negotiable deposits,” amounting to P5 billion, initially, although I gathered that its approval from the Bangko Sentral is an even higher amount. The issuance of those certificates, which are actually bank IOUs, offering higher yields than other deposits, bearing a specific maturity date, has become a trend in local banking, because it is a sure way for banks to raise money for expansion.

It is a busy week for SECB also because yesterday (Wednesday) it officially signed the documents for its acquisition of Premiere Development Bank, together with the latter’s 40 or so branches. According to SECB, the selling agents for its LTCND are lead arrangers and book runners Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered, both foreign banks, plus the local financial institution Multinational Investment Bancorporation and of course the bank itself.

The offering period will last for 10 days only, or until February 10, with the target issue date only seven days later on February 17. For such high-yielding borrowing instruments, banks normally target individuals with savings accounts in the bank, which are really not making enough in interest. For SECB, for instance, the minimum investment is P50,000. The bank said that the proceeds would go to its expansion, particularly in its consumer lending business. Now, based on its 2011 performance, its loan portfolio grew 24 percent, now amounting to P92 billion. Thus, its interest income from loans grew also by more than 20 percent, reaching P7.5 billion. This figure helped to push its net income to P6.7 billion in 2011, with an ROE at 25 percent, one of the highest in local banking.