Allow owners to vote UCPB shares — Danding

BAGUIO CITY — Businessman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. said yesterday he did not use coconut levy funds in acquiring his shares of stock in the United Coconut Planters Bank during a Supreme Court hearing on the validity of a Sandiganbayan order allowing him and other private owners to exercise their vote as stockholders.

Cojuangco’s counsel, Estelito Mendoza, in his oral argument before the SC en banc, said that the Sandiganbayan has not acted with grave abuse of discretion in allowing them to exercise their rights to vote their shares of stock in the UCPB.

The Sandiganbayan ordered last Feb. 28, 2001 that Cojuangco and other private respondents who are acknowledged to be registered stockholders of UCPB can exercise their rights to vote their shares of stock and to be voted themselves in the UCPB stockholders meeting.

Mendoza said allowing the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) to vote on respondent’s shares of stock is to perpetuate deprivation of property (the right to vote incident to stock ownership) committed without due process of law, on the basis of a writ of sequestration which was unauthorized and issued without prima facie evidence.

Mendoza urged the Supreme Court to act with expediency on the motion to allow the Sandiganbayan ruling to take effect immediately in order that the registered stockholders can assume their right to vote.

He cited that the only way that UCPB can survive an impending crisis is to have equity infused in the bank but this is not possible if the rightful owners, over a million farmers and several private owners including Cojuangco, are not given the liberty to elect a board of directors and be allowed to manage the bank.

Mendoza assailed government’s indecisiveness in resolving the sequestration issues on companies such as UCPB suspected as being acquired with ill-gotten wealth.

The lawyer lamented that every time there is a change in the country’s leadership, there is also a change in nominees by the PCGG further stalling any possible development in the company with sequestered shares.