Tan lawyer hits government for pursuing tax suit

Former Solicitor General Estelito Mendoza, legal counsel of Fortune Tobacco Corp., said yesterday taipan Lucio Tan has been severely maligned for a case he is not even involved in.

"Independently of the fact that Fortune has no tax liability, there is not any document related to these taxes in which the name of Mr. Tan appears, much less a document signed by him," Mendoza said in a press statement.

He said there is no evidence that Tan was a corporate officer responsible for the payment, or non-payment, of taxes.

Mr. Tan’s name was never mentioned in the 60,000 supposed pieces of evidence submitted by Chato, he added.

Mendoza said the government, which recently filed an appeal on the tax case before the Supreme Court, is pursuing an unfounded suit based on allegations of former Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Commissioner Liwayway Vinzons-Chato.

A review of the history of the tax cases will show that Chato had railroaded the filing of tax evasion cases against 80 individuals, that she was not able to establish the deficiency taxes due from Fortune, and that she failed to prove the cigarette distributors were dummies of Fortune, Tan’s lawyer said.

During Chato’s incumbency, she lost all her cases against them in different judicial courts, he added. The Supreme Court, in February 1997, resolved to remand the case to the lower courts, citing the right of people to be protected against hasty, malicious and oppressive prosecution, and from an open and public accusation of crime and the trouble and expense and anxiety of a public trial.

The second time around, the cases were again dismissed by the Metropolitan Trial Court of Marikina City and the Court of Appeals (CA).

The tax case had been heard for seven years (starting 1993), with the courts – from the Quezon City Regional Trial Court to the Marikina Metropolitan Trial Court to the Supreme Court and the CA – ruling in favor of Fortune.

Earlier, Mendoza lamented how the government was reviving the case through appeals before the high court just to prove that the Estrada administration is not favoring a presidential friend.

"Bakit ibinabalik ulit nila ang kaso at isinasama pa si Mr. Tan? Ito’y persecution na (Why are they reviving the case and involving Mr. Tan? This is already persecution)," Mendoza said.