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THE
Philippine company which transformed a garbage dump into
a shipping facility has sued its former president and
chief executive officer for several counts of qualified
theft.
Harbour
Centre Port Terminal Inc., which runs a Manila facility
of the same name, has accused Vicente T. Suazo Jr.,
currently the administrator of the Maritime Industry
Authority (Marina), for issuing checks to himself worth
a total of P1.99 million on six different occasions
during 1999 and 2002 without the company’s consent.
Various
company employees have also alleged that Suazo funneled
about P6.35 million in several occasions for himself but
the government prosecutor has rejected to hear the case
after Harbour Centre and its witnesses failed to
substantiate its allegations.
The
accusations include coercing the company cashier from
issuing receipts as the money was to be delivered to
Reghis Romero II, Harbour Centre’s and RII Builder’s
chairman, by Suazo himself.
However,
the Manila City Prosecutor’s Office pinned down the
Marina administrator on the checks issued by “Suazo
himself and also encashed by him, without any
explanation on why this happened,” the resolution said.
“…Company’s losses in the amount of P216,840.81 on 08
January 2002 and P1,779,331.36 on six other occasions
from 09 December 1999, to 14 November 2001, are
sufficiently proven on record,” the document added.
“The
accusations leveled against respondent Suazo were never
really refuted by the latter sufficiently enough to
convince an unbiased mind that the complaints were
probably untrue. All that respondent could muster were
bare denials and charges of ill-motive on the part of
complainant and its owners,” the prosecutor’s office
said. “Denial, however, could not withstand the
overwhelming documentary evidence, which show positive
losses on the part of the company probably due to the
malfeasance of respondent Suazo.”
The case
of six counts of qualified theft became a full-blown
affair after the prosecutor’s office endorsed it to be
raffled off to one of the branches of the Manila
Regional Trial Court last March. Preliminary hearing was
done late last May and another was scheduled within the
month.
On March
14, the court has already served a warrant of arrest for
Suazo but the respondent posted a bail bond of P404,000,
according to court documents.
Harbour
Centre also wanted to indict Celso S. Perez, Suazo’s
executive assistant when he was at the company but the
prosecutor dismissed the case for insufficient evidence.
In his
defense, Suazo questioned the timing of the complaint,
which was made one and a half years after he resigned in
March 2003.
He also cited that Harbour Centre filed the complaint
after he appeared at the Senate regarding the Smokey
Mountain Development and Reclamation Project, an act for
which Suazo did not consult Romero since the former was
no longer employed by the company.
“The
belated filing of this complaint preponderantly shows it
was an afterthought and ill-motivated in anticipation
that he (Suazo) might be used as a witness against
Romero by Sen. (Miriam Defensor) Santiago before the
SBRC (Senate Blue Ribbon Committee),” the Prosecutor’s
resolution stated, quoting the documents filed by Suazo.
Suazo,
who was once an assistant general manager of Philippine
Ports Authority (PPA), said that the PPA could have
easily discovered the anomaly if he illegally siphoned
off the docking fees supposed to be divided between the
state firm and Harbour Centre.
External
and internal auditors have looked into the books of
Harbour Centre and found no such irregularity in the
company’s books, Suazo claimed.
However,
the prosecutor disagreed, saying that the irregularity
may not be revealed “when the accounts were never
disclosed or reflected in the corporation’s books.”
“Thus…there is sufficient evidence to show the presence
of both the element of taking of personal property of
the company and grave abuse of confidence.”
Questions regarding the
Smokey Mountain
project were raised in August 2004, when Sen. Santiago
claimed that the National Housing Authority (NHA) had
paid Romero some P3.1 billion to convert the former
dumpsite into a low-cost housing complex and an
industrial commercial site where the Manila Harbour
Centre now operates.
Under
the contract RII, which formed a joint venture with NHA
to develop Smokey Mountain, would spend for the entire
project and in turn become the owner of 79 hectares of reclaimed land, according to a Senate document.
It
claimed that after RII built a few low-cost housing
units, the company declared that it ran out of money,
failing to fully finance the project.
Meanwhile, the government paid P3.1 billion to continue
the project, gave RII some 10 hectares of land valued at
P1.75 billion, and the right to reclaim an additional
150 hectares more. In exchange, the government would
have 60 percent of the voting shares of the corporation.
According to the senator, Romero later on diluted
ownership of the joint venture and took control of the
company’s majority shares. |
