Estrada knew his friend bribed official: Almadro

Estrada knew his friend bribed official: Almadro

MANILA (Reuters): A former Philippine stock exchange official testified on Tuesday that President Joseph Estrada indicated that one of his friends implicated in insider trading had bribed the country's top securities regulator.

"I was shocked," Ruben Almadro, the former head of the compliance group of the exchange, told Estrada's Senate impeachment trial.

"Here I was facing the president of the republic, the chief enforcer of the law, he was telling me that his friend had bribed a public official and he did nothing to take action against the bribe giver or the bribe taker."

Almadro, a prosecution witness in Estrada's trial on corruption charges, was recounting his meeting with Estrada at the presidential palace last year at the height of a stock market scandal in which a businessman-friend of the president, Dante Tan, was found prima facie guilty of price manipulation.

Estrada will be removed from office if convicted on any of the charges against him, ranging from taking bribes from illegal gambling syndicates to amassing unexplained wealth, betrayal of public trust and culpable violation of the constitution.

A two-thirds vote by the 22-member Senate, which acts as an impeachment court, is required to convict Estrada, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Almadro had investigated the sudden rise and fall in share prices of gaming firm BW Resource Corp in 1999 while he was with the stock exchange.

Almadro said he and another stock exchange official went to the presidential palace in February last year to report to the president on their investigations.

He said Estrada initially told them Tan was not a manipulator but a victim of BW's price fluctuations.

Almadro added that after being told of Tan's alleged role in price fixing, Estrada had said: "Dante told me that he had fixed Yasay." Then Estrada made a gesture indicating that money had been paid, he said.

Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Perfecto Yasay also investigated the case. BW, which has now been renamed Fairmont Holding Inc, rose some 5,000 per cent in 1999 before collapsing in October that year.

Almadro said his investigation showed Tan and his associates made a profit of 820 million pesos ($16 million) from BW's share price surge.

At the trial's resumption on Tuesday, defense lawyers blocked attempts by the prosecution to introduce what it called evidence that Estrada, his wife and mistresses held bank accounts in excess of his declared assets.

Prosecutors summoned Citibank Philippines' Vice-President Victor Lim to the witness stand to try and pry out information about assets linked to Estrada.

But Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide, who is presiding over the trial, upheld a defense objection that the subpoena issued to the bank executive limited his testimony only to certain accounts.

Prosecutor Oscar Moreno alleged that Estrada and his wife had many accounts with Citibank, including savings and current accounts, government securities investments and foreign deposits.

Three of Estrada's mistresses, including two former movie actresses, also had many accounts with the bank, Moreno asserted.

Moreno said Lim would have confirmed such accounts existed. The defense opposed the questioning of Lim on the alleged accounts.

Lim later invoked bank secrecy laws when a senator asked him to provide details of some of the accounts. Manila newspapers have said Estrada has fathered several children by different women since his days as a movie star in the 1950s. Estrada has not denied the allegations.

The prosecution has said the existence of Estrada's previously undisclosed accounts would prove he had assets far in excess of those he declared in his financial statements, in violation of anti-corruption laws.