Unilab’s Campos dies at 85

One of the most successful and low-key immigrant "rags-to-riches" taipans of Southeast Asia, Jose Yao Campos of top pharmaceutical manufacturer United Laboratories Inc. (Unilab) and the Greenfields realty group, recently passed away at the age of 85.

Sources said he passed away April 30, but family members chose to keep details low-key like the businessman had been all his life.

Campos is known in the Filipino-Chinese business community by his Chinese name "Yao Cho Diat." Friends remember him as one of the country’s most progressive employers which made Unilab union-free for decades, and as a quiet philanthropist. Others remember him for his close friendship to the late President Ferdinand Marcos who entrusted many assets in his name and invited him to be godfather to kids Bongbong and Irene.

Perhaps, it was only Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco Jr. who can compare with Campos in having won the close friendship and personal trust of the late president.

Sources said Campos was already a friend of Marcos when the latter was just a lawyer and young legislator representing Ilocos Norte province.

During the wedding of Irene Marcos and Gregorio Araneta III in Ilocos Norte in 1983, the media-shy and low-profile Campos sent his son Joselito Dee Campos Jr. as proxy.

After the 1986 Edsa uprising, Campos also became the first Marcos crony to have voluntarily cooperated with the new regime of President Corazon Aquino by turning over Marcos assets in his name to the Presidential Commission of Good Government (PCGG).

Sources said that the assets Campos turned over to the government actually even exceeded the actual properties the PCGG had in its secret list retrieved from Marcos documents at Malacañang. — Wilson Lee Flores