MANILA, Philippines — Believing it has peeled the layers of the “onion cartel” that drove up prices of the vegetable in 2022, the House agriculture and food panel says it could file charges against businesswoman Leah Cruz and government insiders they say conspired with her to cause an artificial shortage of the crop.
Rep. WIlfrido Mark Enverga (Quezon, 1st District) said in a press conference Thursday that while the committee has yet to reach a final decision, “there will be individuals whom we will recommend for the filing of charges.”
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He said the panel will review documents from the investigations “to ensure that there’s a fair chance given to the individuals we are pursuing and (that) the case is backed by documentary evidence.”
Following the marathon hearings into the suspected smuggling and hoarding of onions — at one point, House Speaker Martin Romualdez threatened "uncooperative" resource persons with jail time — Rep. Stella Quimbo (Marikina City) said that the panel has arrived at a conclusion: businesswoman Lea Cruz is the “reigning, undisputed Sibuyas (Onion) Queen.”
“Leah Cruz operates the biggest onion cartel in the country. She does this through an SEC-registered corporation called Philippine VIEVA Corporation, which was established in 2013,” Quimbo said while reading the committee’s press statement.
‘This was created at the time when she was first tagged as 'sibuyas queen' in a series of news reports in 2012. She is the effective majority owner of the company,” Quimbo added.
Quimbo said the panel arrived at its finding after nine meetings and “a careful scrutiny” of public documents like companies’ general information sheets, registries of the Bureau of Plant Industry and the Department of Trade and Industry, income statements and inventory reports.
“An onion cartel is alive and thriving in this country,” Quimbo said in Filipino.
Business friends and gov’t officials allegedly in cahoots
Quimbo said that the panel found Cruz’ company, PhilVIEVA, to be dubious because, among other things, it does not have joint operations and joint income despite carrying large names under its belt.
Quimbo said that PhilVIEVA is a “fully vertically integrated corporation” that covers almost all aspects of the operations of the onion industry “from head to toe:” from farming (Leah Cruz), trading (Yom Trading, La Reina), cold storage (Tian Long), and trucking (Golden Shine).
“Their statements about the purpose of their business were not consistent. But they are customers and investors of one another,” Quimbo added.
How did the alleged “onion cartel” of Cruz drive up onion prices? The panel said Cruz used “dummy corporations,” evaded the DA’s import blacklist, cheated farmers with low prices by depriving them of cold storage facilities and cornered onion imports.
Quimbo said that Cruz lied to the committee when they asked her about the owners of the “dummy corporations,” which they were able to verify using public documents submitted by the corporations.
It was through the panel’s scrutiny of the telephone numbers of the companies that they found these to be “identical” with the phone numbers used by Cruz’ office, Quimbo said.
“They don’t know each other but they use the same telephone numbers? What are they, partyline?” Quimbo said, referring to a practice in the 1980s of telephone subscribers sharing the same number and line.
Enverga said that the committee is also considering recommending the filing of criminal cases against government officials who may have helped Cruz import onions despite a ban.
"For a cartel to thrive, you have to be joined by someone in government. That will not be successful without someone in government conspiring with you,” Enverga said in Filipino.