PCGG running after firms of Lucio Tan

The government is going after 10 companies of taipan Lucio Tan, including Fortune Tobacco, Allied Bank and Asia Brewery, all allegedly part of the ill-gotten wealth of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos being held in trust by the business tycoon.

In a 29-page petition filed with the Fifth Division of the Sandiganbayan, the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) used as basis the November 2001 cross-claim of former First Lady Imelda Marcos in seeking to seize Tan’s assets.

The forfeiture case included Fortune Tobacco Corp., Asia Brewery Inc., Allied Banking Corp., Foremost Farms, Himmel Industries Inc., Grandspan Development Corp., Silangan Holdings Inc., Dominium Realty and Construction Corp., and Shareholdings Inc.

The government wants 60 percent of Tan’s assets forfeited in its favor based on a claim of Mrs. Marcos that her husband was the actual owner of 60 percent of the aforementioned companies.

The report about the latest PCGG forfeiture claims filed with the Sandiganbayan late yesterday reached Tan in China where he is on a business trip.

Tan expressed surprise over the revival of the PCGG forfeiture cases for his 10 companies.

"All of these (companies) are sequestered for the past 24 years. Are they going to sequester them again?" he told The STAR. He refused to further elaborate until he confers with his lawyers headed by former solicitor general Estelito Mendoza, who are handling the sequestration cases against these firms that are now pending at the Sandiganbayan.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said that Imelda Marcos could have provided the PCGG with evidence that Tan’s business empire was seeded by Marcos’ wealth.

"Whatever, this is political season and the administration’s message to the business community is: be careful whom you backup or else," Pimentel said.

Government lawyers said the Marcos widow’s statement declaring that her husband’s interests in the firms were merely "held in trust" by Tan, his family and business associates, was virtually an admission of the basic allegation in the government’s complaint.

She narrated that "sometime in the late 1980s," Tan and President Marcos agreed to consolidate their assets under Shareholdings Inc.

After the consolidation, the two organized in mid-1984 three more holding companies, among them Basic Holdings Corp., Supreme Holdings Corp. and Falcon Holdings Corp. for purposes of segregating their beneficial ownership.

Tan’s assets were supposedly handled by Basic Holdings while the Marcos interests were handled by Falcon and Supreme Holdings.

"In express recognition of the beneficial ownership of Marcos, the incorporators of both Falcon and Supreme executed and delivered to Marcos blank deeds of assignment," Mrs. Marcos pointed out in her answer.

After the late strongman’s demise in 1989, Mrs. Marcos said she demanded that Shareholdings and Tan deliver the 60 percent holdings to her as surviving spouse and heir, but that they repeatedly ignored her.

The PCCG also anchored its petition on the July 2003 decision of the Supreme Court, where it declared that the total legitimate income of the Marcoses from 1965 up to the time they were ousted in 1986 was just P2.3 million.

Thus, the Marcos interests in Tan’s firms must be declared part of their ill-gotten wealth.

"In fine, it can be deduced in the averments and admission of defendant Imelda Marcos that she and defendant Ferdinand Marcos concealed their beneficial ownership/interest in the subject corporations through their dummies, agents, or nominees in the persons of defendant Lucio Tan and the other defendants," PCGG lawyers stressed.

In March 2006, the Sandiganbayan’s Fifth Division nullified the government’s sequestration over Tan’s three firms, Allied, Fortune and Foremost Farms, citing the absence of prima facie factual foundation that the properties covered (by the writs) are ill-gotten wealth. - With Marichu Villanueva, Marvin Sy