SENATE investigators will start on Wednesday a formal inquiry into an alleged illegal investment syndicate involving Performance Investment Products Corp. (PIPC), which incurred losses amounting to millions of dollars worth of investments in foreign-exchange trade in what senators suspect to be “another investment scam.”

Senator Mar Roxas II, trade and commerce committee chairman, said the joint inquiry with the Committee on Banks chaired by Sen. Edgardo Angara is expected to produce remedial legislation aimed at providing further protection to the investing public.

Roxas said agencies regulating investment instruments must be strengthened and their coordination tightened in order to beef up their efforts against perpetrators of similar Ponzi schemes, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Bangko Sentral, the Insurance Commission and the Department of Trade and Industry.

“The government must ensure the implementation of rules on disclosure required of private companies as well as ensuring the authenticity of documents provided to investors,” he added.

Among those invited to Wednesday’s first PIPC hearing are Trade Secretary Peter Favila, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Fe Barin, Bangko Sentral Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. and National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Nestor Mantaring, as well as PIPC general manager Cristina Gonzalez-Tuason and other PIPC officers.

Roxas reiterated earlier appeals for justice for those duped by investment scams like the PIPC, where $250 million worth of investments in the PIPC went down the drain.

“The victims were supposedly enticed to invest at least the equivalent of P1.8 million on the promised earnings of 12 percent per annum or at least P200,000 a year. Who would not be allured by this guaranteed windfall?” Roxas asked.

“Kailangang ikulong ang mga manloloko, tapalan ang lahat ng butas ng batas at palakasin ang ating mga ahensiya sa kapakanan ng mga konsyumer ng mga investment product katulad nitong sa PIPC [We need to jail the cheats, plug all the loopholes and strengthen the agencies for the sake of the consumers of investment products like the PIPC],” he said.

The joint hearings by the two committees were triggered by separate Senate resolutions filed by Sens. Juan Ponce Enrile and Loren Legarda calling for a full-blown congressional investigation into the operations and performance of the PIPC and other corporations with similar transactions.

Senators were earlier informed that the scam collapsed after a PIPC official reportedly took off with $250 million worth of investments, prompting PIPC investors to lodge formal complaints with the NBI. 

Records showed that the PIPC was listed as the local subsidiary of Performance Investment Products Corp.-BVI, an investment company based in the British Virgin Islands. But Roxas noted that the local PIPC is registered as a research company which, he said, is not authorized to sell investment products.

“Such a glaring incongruity with the actual business practices PIPC was allegedly engaged in was somehow overlooked by both the authorities and by the investors. I would like to see how this happened,” Roxas said. He added that while it is important to bring the perpetrators to justice and compensate the victims, immediate reforms must be “put in place to plug whatever loopholes there are in pertinent laws.”

“It must be established whether our existing laws are sufficient, and if not, what can be amended. What we are looking at are ways to make more transparent the process by which consumers enter into transactions,” Roxas added.

THE P83-million surveillance equipment contract that the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) forged with a private company at the height of the government’s preparation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit in Cebu last year is not only “grossly overpriced” but is also “systematically flawed,” the complainant in the pending plunder case against the DPWH officials claimed.

SENATE investigators will start on Wednesday a formal inquiry into an alleged illegal investment syndicate involving Performance Investment Products Corp. (PIPC), which incurred losses amounting to millions of dollars worth of investments in foreign-exchange trade in what senators suspect to be “another investment scam.”

Soldiers tasked to augment policemen in maintaining peace and order when the antigraft court renders its decision on the plunder case of former President Joseph Estrada got their final order on Tuesday—enforce the decision, be it against or favorable to the fallen leader.

THE Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday allowed a limited live media coverage of the Sandiganbayan’s promulgation of the decision in the plunder cases against former President Joseph Estrada.

THE Bangko Sentral management is making life more difficult for an employee, denying him the privilege of overtime work usually on night shifts that boost the meager paychecks of regular work, apparently because of his activism.

A FUGITIVE Japanese businessman, who was ordered deported last year but who managed to disappear, finally surfaced at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Monday night and was immediately arrested.

Member-consumers of the Batangas Electric Cooperative II (Batelec II), the country’s largest, are alarmed by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decision to take over the criminal cases filed by the National Electrification Administration (NEA) against eight board members of the cooperative who have been linked to alleged multi-million-peso irregularities.