BW disputes Senate findings on insider trading

A top official of BW Resources Corp. disputed yesterday the findings of a Senate inquiry on the alleged insider trading and stock manipulation activities of the company's president, Eduardo Lim.

Lawyer Jose Rivera, BW corporate secretary, said Lim could not have engaged in anything illegal in the sale of company shares, insisting that when the transaction took place, the latter was no longer connected with the brokerage house that sold the shares.

Rivera was reacting to the findings of a Senate panel that Lim was still with Belson Securities when it sold 300,000 shares of BW in 1999.

"The brokerage firm's general information sheet -- which offers the best documentary evidence -- shows that Eduardo Lim was no longer with Belson Securities in 1999," he said.

Rivera made the clarification after Sen. Raul Roco, chairman of the Senate committee on banks, alleged that Lim could have violated insider trading laws since he was a director of Belson when he bought the stock.

The senator said when the shares were bought by Belson in May 1999, the price per share soared from P4 to P12, and after a month, Belson sold them at P27 per share.

In a Senate hearing last week, Lim said he has not been connected with Belson for the past four years, or long before BW entered the stock market via backdoor listing in 1997.

"Mr. Lim is not guilty of insider trading. He was neither a director nor a stockholder of Belson in 1999," Rivera insisted. "He was telling the truth."

Meanwhile, Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago said the Senate panel should suspend its hearings as requested by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), both of which are conducting their own probe on BW's alleged inside trading activities.

"The Senate hearing is merely administrative, while the hearings of the SEC and PSE are criminal in nature. Logically, the criminal hearings should take precedence over administrative hearings," Santiago said.

She pointed out that confidence in local equities will return only if the SEC and PSE finish their investigation "without political interference."

"The Senate hearing is only for the purpose of finding out if Congress should pass another bill. There is no urgency about it," the senator said.

In a related development, an opposition lawmaker warned yesterday that the government and BW have agreed in principle to operate an on-line numbers game similar to jueteng.

Rep. Federico Sandoval (Lakas, Malabon-Navotas) said the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) and BW "plan to bring jueteng to the home of every Filipino" by patterning operations after the popular on-line bingo games.

"Pagcor and BW have agreed in principle to introduce this to the market soon. In fact they are already conducting dry-runs in some areas of the country," Sandoval claimed. "Approval of the plan is tantamount to legalizing jueteng and bringing it to our very homes." -- With Liberty Dones, Cecille Suerte Felipe