Part Four
WHEN Chairman Magtanggol Gunigundo took over the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), one of the first things he did was to try to correct what he believed to be an immoral and onerous agreement signed by David M. Castro and Roberto S. Benedicto. He asked the Sandiganbayan in a petition to allow the PCGG to revise the compromise deal, but the court denied his petition.
Solicitor General Raul Goco also filed a reconsideration with the Supreme Court on behalf of the PCGG, but the High Tribunal affirmed the lower court’s decision and, thus, barred the PCGG from further bothering Benedicto.
Before Gunigundo took over the management of the PCGG, Castro hired the services of Shamrock, a group of professional economists, lawyers, accountants and researchers, to review and evaluate all the legal actions against the Marcoses and their cronies.
Some officials under Gunigundo, however, criticized the hiring of Shamrock, saying that important PCGG records were unnecessarily exposed to people who were not covered by the government’s mandatory requirements on accounting, auditing and handling of state secrets.
Interviewed, Castro ignored the criticism and bragged that it was Shamrock that helped collate the evidence for the 10 of the 12 banner civil cases filed with the Sandiganbayan against Ferdinand E. Marcos and his cronies.
Castro also said that, through the help of the group, he was able to discover that the Aquino administration indeed made a mistake of not impleading the corporate assets of Marcos and his cronies.
But instead of criticizing the Aquino regime, Castro chose to call the blunder a simple act of omission committed by former PCGG lawyers who, according to him, believed in theory that only an individual can be a crony or a defendant and not the corporation or its assets.
Castro told this writer that the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) lawyers themselves believed at the time the civil cases were filed that the corporate assets were just used as vehicles to acquire or hide the hidden wealth of the individual defendants and, therefore, the corporate assets did not have a personality different from the individual defendants.
Whatever, it was nonetheless a costly mistake with far-reaching legal implications. The original 43 civil cases had grown in number to 320 civil cases, while the 44 criminal cases increased to 171; 117 were then pending trial before the Sandiganbayan and various regional trial courts, while the remaining 54 were still in the preliminary stage before the Ombudsman.
Sixteen of the civil cases were scheduled for pretrial, four for trial on merits, 16 were pending hearing on incidental issues and four were under consideration for a possible compromise agreements—all with the Sandiganbayan.
Nine other civil cases were for the forfeiture of the Marcoses’s assets, while the lawyers of the Marcoses and their cronies have filed 107 cases with the Supreme Court against the PCGG. So far, only 27 cases had been resolved by the High Court.
The remaining 80 cases were still pending with the High Tribunal, while the other cases in the lower courts were yet to be scheduled for hearings.
Because of the legal complexity, these cases may not be resolved at all, considering the usual delay in scheduling the hearings, in the production of documents and in various dilatory tactics resorted to by some lawyers to get the advantage in the litigation of these cases.
The prosecution of these cases suffered another setback because of the existing animosities between the OSG and the PCGG. The OSG had been repeatedly accusing some PCGG officials of not allowing its prosecutors to have complete access to the body of evidence under PCGG custody or control.
The court also remanded several criminal cases to the Ombudsman for reinvestigation, as the PCGG, according to the court, cannot be investigator, prosecutor and judge, all at the same time.
Another controversial case that escaped scrutiny was the return lock, stock and barrel of Meralco, ABS-CBN and other corporations to the Lopez family shortly after the Edsa uprising.
The Lopezes claimed that they were victims of the Marcos regime.
But a set of documents belied their claim, showing that they sought Marcos’s help for financial assistance for Meralco and offering the sale of their shares in three letters signed by Eugenio Lopez on February 19, 1973, March 20, 1973, and September 17, 1973.
The sale was finally consummated on December 16, 1974, to Meralco Foundation Incorporated, which assumed the indebtedness of Benpres Holdings in Meralco Securities Corporation to foreign and local banks amounting to P101.1 million.
The deed of sale was, in fact, guaranteed by the Philippine National Bank through a letter of credit it issued to the foundation for the purchase of the Benpres shares of stocks.
The foundation also assumed Benpres’s P9.5-million debt on stock subscription and an obligation to pay Benpres P48.6 million on its equity, payable by installment over a 10-year period at a 10-percent interest on the unpaid balance.
In other words, what this particular set of documents showed was that the Lopezes were not victims of martial law but were, in fact, the beneficiaries when Marcos helped them out of their financial mess.
Strangely, the takeover by the Lopez family of the Meralco after the Edsa revolt was shrouded in mystery despite President Corazon C. Aquino’s avowed policy of full disclosure and transparency.
To be continued