Old raps revived vs prosecution head

Has harassment time come? A rehashed complaint for graft dismissed by the Office of the Ombudsman years ago has been revived by the same obscure government retiree against prosecution manager Rep. Feliciano Belmonte Jr.

This time, former President Corazon Aquino, Makati Rep. Joker Arroyo and Sen. Teofisto Guingona Jr. – all of them with the opposition – were implicated with Belmonte in the case involving plunder, graft and corruption and falsification of public documents.

The charge concerns the sale of the former Commercial Bank of Manila (ComBank) by the Government Service Insurance System for P510 million during the Aquino administration, when Belmonte was GSIS president and general manager.

In his two-page complaint, German Bacaltos of Cebu City said Belmonte and Dante Santos, who was chairman of the GSIS board of trustees, committed plunder under the "political influence" of Aquino and Arroyo, who was Aquino’s executive secretary, and Guingona, who was the chairman of the Commission on Audit.

Bacaltos said on June 22, 1987, Belmonte and Santos signed a memorandum of agreement with the Filipino Investor Group, represented by Edgardo Tordesillas, and the First National Bank of Boston, represented by its vice president, Benjamin Sevilla.

Belmonte responded that he "couldn’t recall exact details of the case since this guy filed about four or five cases against me all of which were dismissed by the Ombudsman several years ago."

He described the complainant as a "disgruntled employee who is in the habit of filing cases. Even my predecessor Roman Cruz Jr. was not spared by him. Bacaltos however, has a special grudge against me because he claims he was my classmate and I didn’t promote him," Belmonte said.

Some of the supposed evidence presented by the complainant in the past have also been discovered by the Ombudsman to have been fabricated, he said.

Under the memorandum of agreement, GSIS sold to the investor group all the outstanding and capital stocks of ComBank for P510 million.

Bacaltos said the memorandum of agreement was made into a formal agreement on Nov. 27, 1987 after the signing of the purchase and sale agreement for the 3,216,093 shares in the capital stock of ComBank or 99.9247 percent of its issued and outstanding capital stock amounting to P510,804,023.50 to the Bank of Boston and three other companies.

"It appears at first glance that respondents Belmonte and Santos sold GSIS’s 99.934 percent interest in ComBank to the above corporations at a shockingly low price of P510 (million) despite its authorized capitalization valued at P600 (million) and total deposits of P1.016794 (billion) with an actual ComBank network of at least P684.077186 (million) as evidenced by a Securities and Exchange Commission information sheet," the complaint read.

Bacaltos said there was actually nothing paid to GSIS, to the "damage and prejudice of the government," as Lim said in a sworn affidavit submitted the National Bureau of Investigation on July 9, 1999.

"Mrs. Lim owns 20 percent of the common shares of ComBank valued at P32 million but the supporting documents later prepared show that she borrowed the sum of P32,165,411.72 from the Bank of Boston Trust Co. which transactions was not however approved by the Central Bank," the complaint read.

But the sale of the bank had been upheld by all government agencies concerned during the Aquino administration.