Corona wife summoned for alleged JHMC fund abuses | ABS-CBN News | Latest Philippine Headlines, Breaking News, Video, Analysis, Features

Corona wife summoned for alleged JHMC fund abuses | ABS-CBN News | Latest Philippine Headlines, Breaking News, Video, Analysis, Features

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MANILA, Philippines - Baguio fiscals have summoned the wife of impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona to explain her side in a complaint filed by a former official of the John Hay Management Corp. (JHMC) more than a year ago.

In his affidavit filed on July 16, 2010, former JHMC operations group manager Frank Daytec Jr. alleged Ma. Cristina R. Corona showed “a pattern of abuse and misuse, she disbursed JHMC funds as though they were her personal funds.”

Daytec is supposedly now in Canada, according to a Philippine Daily Inquirer report last Saturday.

In his affidavit, Daytec said he noticed of Corona’s alleged misuse of JHMC funds upon his assumption of office in 2008.

He claimed to have noticed first a payment document dated March 14, 2008, worth P14,560, covering a hotel stay at the Baguio Country Club.

The guests were supposedly the then-associate justice of the high court and his wife.

Daytec noticed the hotel accommodations were paid for by the JHMC, even if there was no official company activity there.

The same happened again on several occasions thereafter, even when an option was available for Mrs. Corona to stay at the nearby Manor Hotel, he claimed.

Daytec claimed he could not question Mrs. Corona’s actions because of her “oppressive and destructive tendencies that kept me at bay.”

He also noted Mrs. Corona’s supposed closeness to then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Finally, “in the last few days of June, sensing the inevitable end of her stint at JHMC, the chairman sent to the Finance Department a set of receipts amounting to P93,576.56 with a verbal instruction of expeditious processing of her reimbursables,” he alleged.

The reimbursements supposedly showed personal billings, such as expenses for massage, driver’s accommodations, etc., he alleged.

“I ordered the Finance Department to cancel the original check that was prepared for the chairman amounting to P99,000 and look into the billing statements and deduct items that are purely of personal utility,” Daytec said.

Mrs. Corona supposedly learned of what he did and chided him for his actions.

Daytec alleged, “Instead of making himself the restraining presence and injunctive wall between his wife and the funds of JHMC, [the chief justice] let her be.”

The summon was only issued days after Corona was impeached by the House of Representatives.

Mrs. Corona’s holding of a position in government was included in one of the articles of impeachment against the chief justice."