SEC seeks new evidence to pin down Dante Tan, 7 others

Individuals who were cleared from any involvement in the 1999 BW Resources stockmarket scandal are not yet off the hook. The Securities and Exchange Commission is contemplating on pursuing its criminal complaints against them just to prove that they were part of a grand conspiracy to push up the share prices of BW.

SEC Chairman Lilia R. Bautista said the commission is now reviewing the case and is looking for additional evidence that will pin down persons believed to be responsible for the large-scale manipulation of BW share prices.

This was in reaction to the recent decision of the Department of Justice to dismiss most of the charges contained in the SEC’s third complaint on BW. Due to insufficient evidence, the Justice Department absolved Dante Tan, former controlling shareholder and president of BW, and seven other businessmen from any wrongdoing.

Tomas Syquia, head of the Compliance and Enforcement Department of SEC, said while the dismissal of the charges dealt a big blow to SEC’s efforts in going after perpetuators of securities fraud, this would not preclude them from filing other cases against these persons and other individuals.

"The dismissal amounts to a setback but definitely it does not mean that the cases filed are lost nor does it mean that other cases may not be filed in the near foreseeable future," Syquia said.

"The Commission still has the option of filing criminal complaints against the same persons and may include others and additional evidence deemed appropriate in accordance with the findings of the DOJ panel," Syquia added.

Syquia said it would have been different had the SEC charged all respondents as part of one grand scam. "The Commission’s move to withdraw the charges against some brokers is fatal to the case against Tan since the SEC had initially claimed Tan conspired with the brokers," he said.

The strategy adopted by the SEC was to break the whole incident into smaller components and charge those responsible for each component separately from the others.

Apart from Tan, others cleared by the DOJ were Lucio Co, a crony of former President Joseph Estrada who owns the Pure Gold supermarket chain, brokers Jerry Angping of Angping & Associates, Wilson Sy (Wealth Securities), Charles Ngan (Securities 2000), and individuals Ramon Lee, Marc Vinalon, and Jeanette Que.

The Justice Department said the SEC failed to present sufficient evidence to support the charges of hyping the stock, wash sales, matched orders and cross trades, marking the close and done-through transactions and syndicated estafa against Tan and other respondents.

The DOJ said Tan can not be charged in court for executing four wash sale transactions because the SEC failed to show a "recognizable pattern, regularity or frequency" in the transactions. In all four transactions, involving 137,000 BW shares, Tan was both the buyer and seller.

Syquia said if only the four transactions were filed simultaneously with the 77 wash sale transactions previously detected, the same would have been found to be significant enough to affect the price of BW.

Nevertheless, the SEC noted that Tan and 11 other businessmen and brokers are facing criminal charges for violation of securities rules and law. These are Jimmy Juan, Eduardo Lim Jr., Raul De Castro, Federico Galang, Eduardo Co, Mario Juan, Hermogenes Laddaran, Robinson Siao, Johnny Yap, Francisco Liboro, and Reynaldo Madrilejo.

The investigation into BW was triggered by the meteoric rise in the share prices of BW in just a short period of time. The share prices of BW are now trading below P1.