Tan warns of more stock market manipulations

BW Resources Corp. is only the latest in a long line of "victims" that have fallen prey to the real "stock manipulators" operating at the Philippine Stock Exchange, BW's major stockholder Dante Tan claimed.

Citing a number of other publicly listed companies mostly involved in real estate, Tan said these firms also suffered in the hands of what he called the "Samurai Group," a powerful block of brokers who can virtually control the prices of their chosen stocks.

"This group of people, day in and day out, they're not doing anything but to identify which shares to pick," Tan told reporters Thursday night.

He said property stocks Fil-Estate Land Inc., Megaworld Properties and Holdings Corp., Empire East Land, Primetown Properties, Uniwide Holdings and Ever-Gotesco were among the issues that have succumbed to the price manipulation tactics of the Samurai Group.

"BW is only the latest victim but it will not be the last, I guarantee you. Because this bunch of people are still in there, there will be another BW in the future, watch out," Tan warned.

Tan declined to identify these brokers although it has become common knowledge that he was alluding to the four brokerage firms which heavily traded in BW shares during the stock's critical price turns last year but surprisingly, were not even implicated in the PSE report.

"I'm sure the Exchange knows who they are. Even the (other) brokers know who they are. They just don't have enough proof because these people are professionals," Tan said.

The four stockbrokers -- Wealth Securities, Mandarin Securities, Abacus Securities and Solar Securities -- have denied any wrongdoing in their BW deals. Even the PSE backed up their claims by saying they found nothing significant to tie up these deals with the activities of Tan and his associates.

"The fact that there's heavy trading doesn't mean there's manipulation," PSE vice president and main report author Ruben Almadro earlier said.

The now-controversial fact-finding report has principally tagged Dante Tan, his friends and associates, and eight brokers most of whom have Tan as their major client, in stock trading anomalies that involve insider trading and price manipulations of BW shares.

Tan, the owner of the Bingo Pilipino franchise and a friend of President Estrada, had filed a P105-million damage suit against Almadro and the PSE for implicating him in the report without due process adding that since he does not represent any brokerage house, he is beyond their jurisdiction.

He urged that he could not even think of manipulating BW's price since at the onset, "I literally fell in love with it."

"From day one when I started buying the shares, I made an announcement, -- probably that was my biggest mistake -- I said I'm going to build this company, I'm not going to sell a single share," Tan said.

But in the process, he said he quickly became the target of the manipulators. "If the owner is selling then they will not touch the share. Why? Because when they push it up, I will sell it to them. At the end of the day, they will be the one holding. Since I've given the word that I'm not selling, then they push it up. And they succeeded."

Tan added that at the time BW chairman and Macau gaming mogul Dr. Stanley Ho visited Manila, the classic "sell on news" scenario happened and that was the time the manipulators started selling.

On Oct. 11, with Ho and company ringing the bell to signal the start of trading at the PSE, a massive selldown occurred. "That's when they started throwing it to me. I start receiving until I ran out of cash. Almadro was right at that point, I already bought P2 billion and ran out of funds."