PCGG: SC reversal of Menzi shares a ‘step forward’

03/31/2009

The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) described the decision of the Sandiganbayan in connection with disputed shares in Manila Bulletin Publishing Corp. “a step forward.”

The high court earlier reversed the decision of the Sandiganbayan and instructed the estate of the late industrialist Hans Menzi to return the P201.13 million the anti-graft court had earlier released to the estate in connection with disputed “Bulletin” shares.

“We expected the decision. It’s a good thing for the PCGG,” Commissioner Jaime Bautista said.

The tribunal gave the estate, through its executor Manuel Montecillo, five days to comply with the order to redeposit the money plus interest in Philtrust Bank, owned by current Manila Bulletin publisher Emilio Yap, from where the money originally came from.

The money is in the form of certificates of time deposit 162828, in the amount of P161,977,558, and CTD 168829, amounting to P39,157,519, which Philtrust Bank released to the estate upon the Sandiganbayan’s order.

The two time-deposit certificates form part of three bank deposits that the PCGG through the Solicitor General, claims to have been part of the ill-gotten wealth of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Bautista said that they expect to win the case since the assets are ill-gotten.

“We will await the final decision. We expect to win the case and be turned over finally to the treasury,” he added.

The PCGG appealed the Sandiganbayan decision to release the funds, but the motion for reconsideration was denied and the Solicitor General subsequently elevated the case to the Supreme Court in July last year.

But government lawyers later discovered that the money was released to Menzi’s estate and holding company a few days before they filed their petition with the high court.

The P201.13 million represents supposed proceeds from the sale of 198,052.5 shares of stock in the Manila Bulletin.

The case stemmed from at least three separate cases pending before the tribunal involving three blocks of shares in the publishing company that Menzi bought from its American founders in 1957.

The cases were filed after the PCGG sequestered shares of the company in 1986 and 1987, claiming the shares were actually part of Marcos’s ill-gotten wealth that were hidden under the names of his cronies.

One case, docketed as GR 152578, involved the 154,472 shares that Menzi had sold to US Automotive Co. Inc., owned by Yap, for P21,304,921 plus interest three weeks before he died on June 27, 1984.

As a result of the sequestration, the monies disputed in the cases were placed in time deposits with Philtrust Bank.

Manila Bulletin was founded by American journalist Carson Taylor in 1900 as a shipping journal, and later expanded to news of general interest.

Menzi purchased the newspaper from Taylor in 1957. In 1961, Yap, owner of US Automotive Co. Inc., purchased Bulletin shares from Menzi and became one of its major stockholders. Jason Faustino

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