BSP denies falsifying documents

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) denied yesterday accusations that it falsified a document that was used to close Urban Bank and its subsidiaries.

BSP Deputy Governor Alberto Reyes said lawyers of Urban Bank are attempting to "becloud the facts" on the closure of the bank in April last year.

Reyes was reacting to a charge made by Presidential housing adviser and former Quezon City Congressman Michael T. Defensor, that the central bank presented to the Ombudsman a falsified letter sent through a fax machine and bearing a different letterhead when Urban Bank’s thrift bank subsidiary declared a bank holiday.

The faxed document supposedly attached the BSP’s Supervision and Examination Sector (SES) report which revealed the financial condition of the bank and was submitted to the Ombudsman. To disprove the SES report that Urban Bank voluntarily declared a bank holiday at 8:46 a.m. of April 26, 2000, former Urban Bank assistant corporate secretary Justina F. Callangan gave the Ombudsman an affidavit saying that no such document was faxed to the BSP at the time. Callangan, instead, signed the document at about 10 a.m. of April 26, 2000 before immediately dispatching it to the BSP.

Reyes said however: "The fact remains that Urban Bank and its affiliate, Urbancorp Development Bank (UDB), decided to go on a voluntary bank holiday on April 25, 2000, and this was the basis for the decision of the BSP Monetary Board to place them under receivership the following day."

Reyes said that Defensor, through his lawyers, tried to make it appear that the BSP filed fabricated and falsified documents on the closure of UDB.

Reyes said the lawyers made much of conflicting markings on a faxed letter indicating the time the BSP was supposed to have received the notice from UDB regarding its declaration of bank holiday.

Such allegations are clearly unfounded, Reyes said.

"The fact that the faxed document bore two imprints on the time it was received, namely 8:46 a.m. And 9 a.m., is of no matter because it nonetheless established that it was signed, executed and received by the BSP," Reyes said. – Rocel Felix