First e-Bank executives belittle raps

Executives of the First e-Bank branded as "baseless" the complaint of qualified theft which was filed by Jesse Yang Yap against officers of the bank. The case was filed before the Makati Prosecutor’s Office.

In a statement, Elmer Nitura, corporate information officer of First e-Bank, said that the case "reeks of malice and is baseless."

"He doesn’t even have his facts straight," said Nitura, clarifying that Ricardo Pascua and Carlos Pedrosa, respected business personalities who were named principal respondents to the case, were not even officers of the bank at the time of the incident.

Pascua become chairman of First e-Bank (then PDCT Bank) in 1998 while Pedrosa was hired and appointed president only in January 2000.

Nitura said the "complaint is no different from the criminal complaint for estafa which the same Mr. Yap had earlier filed against some of our officers. The case was dismissed by the City prosecution Office of Makati last July 9, 2001 for lack of probable cause."

In both complaints, Yap alleged that P20 million were transferred from his account to a certain Jovita Dimalanta without his consent nor authorization. Dimalanta, apparently, was one of the real estate brokers of Yap in buying, lands in the Cotabato provinces.

According to Nitura, the transfer took place in February 1997, or four years before he filed a case. "If there were any veracity to his claim, he should have noticed such a large sum missing from his account and, therefore, would have filed the case much earlier."

He also explained that the Makati City Prosecutor, in dismissing the case, noted "that it would be stretching one’s credulity to accept the fact that a person would not be aware that his P20 million had been debited from his account and credited to another person’s for more than three and a half (3-1/2) years."

The Makati prosecutor went on to observe that "this case merely filed as an afterthought and as an effort to collect his P20 million loss from respondent’s bank.