PCGG to run after Tonyboy’s billions in PLDT dividends

The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) said it will go after Antonio "Tonyboy" Cojuangco in an effort to recover billions of pesos in dividends from government-sequestered shares in Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) issued to the businessman and his family.

Charles Avila, special assistant of PCGG chairman Camilo Sabio, said the commission has already initiated efforts to compel Cojuangco to turn over the dividends he and his family received from PLDT which rightfully belonged to the government through Prime Holdings Inc. (PHI).

"We will form a task force to determine the amount of dividends that were received by... Cojuangco. At the same time, we are also pursuing the legal route to compel him to hand over to government the dividends they had received that were supposed to have been given to the government," Avila told The STAR.

The PCGG said it had filed a motion last Jan. 3 asking the Sandiganbayan to direct PLDT and the Philippine Telecommunications Investment Corp. to make an accounting of all the cash dividends issued corresponding to the 111,415 shares of PTIC, which in turn controls 14 percent of the telecommunications firm.

On Dec. 14, 2006, the Supreme Court ruled with finality that the 111,145 shares in PTIC held by PHI were among the ill-gotten wealth accumulated by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his family.

The High Tribunal had upheld the claim of the government that the PHI and PTIC were dummy companies set up by the Marcoses using associates Jose Yao Campos and Ramon Cojuangco, the father of Antonio Cojuangco, to own shares in PLDT.

The PCGG had filed the case in 1986 against PHI and PTIC, which then controlled 28 percent of PLDT through its 111,145 shares.

Through control of the PTIC shares, the elder Cojuangco had chaired and headed PLDT for decades until his death in 1984. Antonio Cojuangco succeeded his father at the helm of PLDT, also through the PTIC shares.

Cojuangco, in 1998, relinquished his chairmanship and control of PLDT when he sold 44 percent of PTIC to the Hong Kong-based First Pacific group but stayed on as director.

He only stepped down as director last year when the Supreme Court handed down its decision on the PTIC-PHI case.

Workers and consumers’ group had recently pushed for the recovery of billions of pesos received by the Cojuangco family as dividends in PLDT that rightfully belong to the government as part of the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth.