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 ust when you thought things
couldn't
 get
any worse for the embattled ex-president;
with the FBI and the US Justice Department breathing down his neck
as as result of convicted Filipino-American spy Leandro Aragoncillo's
confession,
now comes a new 500 million-peso lawsuit
filed by a former beauty queen accusing Estrada and his associates of
using her forged signature to launder funds through a government-managed
Bank during his tenure as president.
Joelle Marie
Henson Pelaez, now living in the United States, was the second runner-up
in the Binibining Pilipinas beauty pageant of 1999. In her lawsuit
against Estrada, his cronies and Bank officials of the government-sequestered
Coconut Planters Bank,
 Miss
Pelaez alleges that 2.7 billion pesos worth of stocks, bonds, and
commercial paper were transferred using her name and forged signatures
shortly before the former president's impeachment trial began.
The former beauty queen's initial
encounter with the ex-president was when Estrada, in a
gesture of magnanimity, had his then trusted confidant Chavit Singson
give her a check for 2 million pesos as "balato" for his (Estrada's)
mahjong winnings.
 That
check was subsequently cashed by Miss Pelaez who was then 23-years old and
a student at UC Davis in California.
It would be interesting to see how
Estrada and company's legal entanglements in the US play out compared to
the ones he faces in the Philippines. Which country's jurisprudence will
prevail? Or will he and his cohorts go scot-free in the
end just like Marcos and his band of thieves?
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