(Editor's intro: Raissa, foreign correspondent for South China Morning Post and Radio Netherlands, is an independent blogger.)

In January 2001, Joker Arroyo took the lead in asking the Senate impeachment court to subpoena Cathy Weir, then president of Citibank N.A., in order to produce records on then President Joseph Estrada’s dollar deposits. Arroyo was then a House senior prosecutor in Estrada’s impeachment trial.

A grateful nation subsequently voted Joker Arroyo to the Senate four months later in May.

I am raising this matter because moments ago, I heard Joker Arroyo, now a senator-judge, express wariness and caution in opening Chief Justice Renato Corona’s bank records, particularly dollar account records.

Sen. Arroyo said:

Whether foreign bank deposits can be opened and disclosed before us, an impeachment court, it is very serious….We are treading on a gray area which I share….I have read all the books….on this. we have to discuss this very thoroughly. No one can say he is an expert on this interpretation of the bank secrecy law. And whether it can be opened or not. And because of the policy consideration of course (whether) there will be capital flight or whether there’ll be a bank run and all that sort of thing.

I just could not believe it when I heard Senator Arroyo say all that because he did the exact opposite 11 years ago during Estrada’s impeachment trial.

As the lead House prosecutor Joker Arroyo urged the court to delve into Estrada’s dollar and peso deposits.

It was House prosecutor Joker Arroyo who delivered the bombshell in his opening statement before the Senate impeachment court in December 2000 – that President Estrada had a secret bank account under the alias Jose Velarde or “Valhalla”. Joker Arroyo even flashed on a screen Estrada’s signature on the money bill side by side with the Jose Velarde signature.

The House prosecutors led by Joker Arroyo were successful in getting the Senate impeachment court to open the Equitable-PCI bank records on Estrada’s Jose Velarde secret accounts.