Racing club mystery buyer

A major event took place last Wednesday at the Philippine Racing Club, Inc. (PRCI), owner and operator of the P12-billion Sta. Ana racetrack.

According to sources, despite a temporary restraining order issued by the Makati Regional Trial Court, PRCI directors led by representatives of the Kuala Lumpur-based Magnum Holdings Berhad, ratified the scheme to swap the racetrack with shares in a small holding firm.

They did so, saying the Supreme Court technically allowed them to do that anyway via another TRO that paved the way for them to take up the controversial swap deal.

So, unless the Filipino shareholders led by the Puyat family are able to stop the effects of the ratification of the swap deal in court, the Sta. Ana racetrack may be lost to the holding firm called JTH Davies.

There are those who believe this is not the end of the line for the Filipino shareholders as the Puyat-led group is not without legal recourse.

Already, the group filed last week another case against the Malaysian-backed faction, this time to annul the purchase of PRCI’s purchase of close to 99 percent of JTH Davies and a subsequent sale of close to 30 percent of that share to undisclosed stockholders.

The Puyat group alleged that the sale of about 29.6 percent of PRCI shares was done at a loss. PRCI reportedly purchased them at P10.71 per share but sold it to the mysterious stockholders only at P6.65 per share.

The bargain sale to the mysterious shareholders also led to the dilution of PRCI’s share in JTH Davies from 98 plus percent to just over 68 percent. And after the dilution, the Malaysian-backed group led by Santiago Cua, Sr. a.k.a. Cua Sing Huan moved for the swap deal that would transfer the ownership of Sta. Ana racetrack to JTH Davies – which was consummated last week after the SC TRO paved the way for its ratification.

Technically, every PRCI investor lost some P4 per share in the transaction. And it baffles the business community why the Malaysian-backed Cua group made such a bargain sale when the logical move was to profit from their investment at JTH Davies.

The speculation is that the bargain sale price had to do with who the mysterious beneficiary shareholders are. A guessing game is going on as to their identity.

Observers say these guys technically made P3 billion plus, just by investing P86 million to buy the JTH Davies shares at a bargain from PRCI. They now own – technically – close to 30 percent of the P12 billion-Sta. Ana racetrack. Some people are really just lucky.

The whole scheme would not have been this shadowy and mysterious if the crusade for transparency in corporate governance got a little more boost. But this is probably not the end of the story. Let’s wait for the next chapter.

VACCuum

It appears that the self-styled anti-crime group Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) and its leader Dante Jimenez have not only lost their touch. They are simply lost.

Founded at the height of the crime sprees in Metro Manila by relatives of the victims in the nineties, VACC vowed to pursue justice by providing assistance to families of victims of heinous crimes. However, some sector say it appears to be losing its bearing when its leaders led by Jimenez recently engaged in Juday-bashing as if the iconic actress is a suspect in an orgy of violence.

Judy Ann Santos explained in a television commercial the concept of Meralco’s systems loss charges by comparing systems loss with ice bought from a store and brought home, with a part of it lost to melting. She said that like all distribution utilities, Meralco is allowed by law to have a systems loss of 9.5 percent due mainly to pilferage and heat.

There are those who cannot understand why VACC leaders would call for a boycott of the actress – in the process shooting the messenger and leaving the message intact.

Maybe it is about time that VACC be reminded that there are more important issues that need to be addressed like the rampant corruption in government and the resurging crime wave that hit the country. Maybe they should start with the massacre in Quezon City two weeks ago where five people were mindlessly killed in a robbery, before their house was burned down.

Or perhaps they can focus their efforts on the RCBC robbery-cum-massacre in Cabuyao, Laguna and the resulting murder of suspects in Batangas, or on alleged corruption taking place within the ranks of the VACC.

Green Cross execs cleared

The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) has cleared the four owners and directors of Green Cross Inc. of any violation of the Anti-Money Laundering Act (RA 9160) being charged against them by former company president Gonzalo Co. Earlier, three estafa charges filed by before the Pasay and Manila courts involving the same litigants have been dismissed.

In a letter addressed to Chief State Prosecutor Jovencito Zuno, AMLC executive director Vicente Aquino said it found no evidence to prove that Greencross violated the law.

Green Cross president Anthony Co expressed jubilation over this recent legal victory while their legal counsel Estelito Mendoza remarked that these court dismissals only prove that these charges are just harassment suits filed against his clients.

It will be remembered that former Gonzalo Co (Co It) filed estafa charges against the company’s board of directors, alleging that he was deprived of his shares through illegal means. Co It held 17 percent of Greencross shares which he sold to the present owners of the company in 1986. The court however said that Co It voluntarily sold his shares as shown by various documents which he himself signed. 

Noted lawyer Jojo Flamiano says this latest decision bolsters the claim of Mendoza that the charges were all harassment suits.

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