Anna de Brux comments on the German Accounts

Anna de Brux comments on the German Accounts that Mike Arroyo was accused of indirectly owning:

As a European bank account holder, allow me to share with you a couple of scenarios related to how a bank-client relationship works in Europe, scenarios which could have easily been done for by Big Mike.

Scenario1 : Say, I hold an account with a local bank here (in Europe) not under my married name. None of my children, even if they carry my married name and could prove they are my children, will be issued a certification unless they have a legal or court-approved warrant.

The only person who could immediately obtain a certification as to my bank account’s real ownership and contents if warranted is me. But there is nothing that prevents my bank from issuing a certificate saying it is not owned by any of my children if I ask for one. As a client and per my request, the bank has no recourse but to issue the certification containing the name or names of any of my children.

Therefore, it’s easy for Mike Arroyo to ask the real owner, if it’s one of his children or friends, to ask the bank for a certification and this can be done without any real hassle — by fax or a simple letter. It’s as simple as that! Mike Arroyo could have gone to the European bank in question and presented a document containing a power of attorney signed by the supposed owner of the account for the bank to issue to the bearer, in this case, Mike Arroyo, a certification that the bearer or that a Mike Arroyo is not the owner of his bank account number.

So, Mike Arroyo’s grandstanding trip to Germany is not useless. It is very useful if only to prove that it is not he who owns the account. But what should damn him, that is if Philippine legal authorities and legislators are not being too pansy about it, is that he couldn’t have had access to this certification in any manner whatsoever unless someone had issued the bank with a proper document or letter of instruction to the bank, signed and sealed by the owner of the said account.

Therefore, while Mike Arroyo, assuming he “may” only be a de facto owner and not the legal owner of the account, his trip and his subsequent media presentation of the purported certification that he is not the owner proves one thing: The bank account exists.

What it contains, how it got there, where it came from, who gave him power of attorney to access it or if it stems from money laundering should be any amateur sleuth’s guess.

Scenario 2: The powerful person gives a dubious bank account number. Given the status of Mike Arroyo, the Germans might have been inclined to accord him a diplomatic helping hand. It would be easy for the German diplomatic post in Manila to send a note to the German bank in question via the usual financial institutions in Germany to check if a GIVEN bank account number is indeed owned by the First Gentleman of the Philippines. Admittedly, the German bank account has no legal or moral obligation to acquiesce but inasmuch as the bank account number is erroneous anyway and it does not exist (perhaps), it is easy for the bank to make a statement: Sorry, folks, the bank has no record of an account numbering etc. etc. in the name of a Jose Miguel Arroyo.

Nobody is the wiser, no European banking secrecy is breached, so nobody the loser — not the German bank, not anyone for that matter.

While European banking secrecy laws are sacrosanct and Europe’s banking system’s rules and regulations are cobbled with technicalities, they are NOT unbreakable.

Signatory members of the OECD, which include Germany, have their national financial brigades. These low-profile brigades will accept anonymous tips from anybody from anywhere around the world and unknown to the international public, will check and keep each tip out as it comes, provided, of course, it has something to do with money-laundering or if it connected to malversation of public or state funds.

They are very powerful because they have virtually blanket legal mandate to crack banking secrets wide open when they have gathered the bits and pieces pertaining to money laundering and put them together to resemble a reasonable basis that an act of money laundering or malversation of public funds has been committed by an individual or indviduals using European banking institutions. These brigades do not have to be in possession of solid, unqualified proof to be able to ram impregnable bank doors open. That’s how powerful these financial brigades are!

Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano could send the German financial brigade an anonymous but damning tip about the powerful personality’s financial schemes and leave it at that. Easy to do too because he says he already has the details and the elements or the goods. He can continue to feed the brigades with info as he goes along.

Anna de Brux

Belguim