Ex-Securities and Exchange Commission executive Martinez dies

MANILA, Philippines – Retired Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) official Jesus Martinez died yesterday afternoon of complications from cancer. He was 62.

SEC spokesperson Gerard Lukban said Martinez died while being treated at a hospital.

“The cancer had spread to other parts of the body,” Lukban said.

It was not clear which type of cancer afflicted Martinez. GMA-7 News said Martinez died of massive pulmonary embolism at the Makati Medical Center.

“We will mourn the loss of one of our colleagues   in the Commission. I’m sure there are people in this office, especially those who had become close to him, who are saddened by his passing,” Lukban said.

Martinez, who served a seven-year term that ended on March 11, 2009, had been embroiled in several controversies, the latest of which was his alleged connivance with Legacy Group owner Celso de los Angeles in covering up the latter’s pre-need units’ problems.

Martinez used to oversee the SEC’s Non-Traditional Department, which supervises pre-need companies.

The Legacy Group scandal has shaken the banking and pre-need industries, leaving many hapless investors with large losses.

A former Legacy Group executive said De los Angeles met with Martinez in late 2007, when the NTD did not issue a dealers license to the Legacy-linked pre-need companies because their trust funds were deficient.

Martinez was implicated for allegedly receiving bribes from De los Angeles. Legacy Plans bought a P3.2-million house in Parañaque City, the ownership of which was later transferred to a son of Martinez.

Apart from this, the Legacy Group in 2006 issued a check amounting to P1.465 million to Martinez as payment for a Ford Expedition it acquired reportedly from Martinez’s son.

The Ford Expedition was booked in the account of Rural Bank of San Juan and personally used by De Los Angeles, the alleged brains behind the fraudulent investment schemes that caused the downfall of the Legacy Group.

Martinez almost got suspended by the Office of the President in 2005 for allegedly failing to pay P600,000 of a seven-year debt to his former Baguio-based friend and business partner.

Martinez claimed then that the suspension was harassment. His office said the suspension was not served.

In May last year, Martinez issued an order, signed solely by him, favoring the Government Service Insurance System, which at the time was planning to wrest control of the Manila Electric Co. from the Lopez family, which has run the country’s largest power distributor for decades.

Martinez was then officer-in-charge of the SEC as chair Fe Barin was abroad for a conference. 

The state-run GSIS and the Lopez family and their allies were in a well-publicized battle for control of the power company.

Martinez’s Show Cause Order essentially gave GSIS – which then had less proxy votes to help it clinch more Meralco board seats than the Lopezes – the chance to elevate the corporate battle to a legal war. GSIS eventually sold its Meralco shares to San Miguel Corp.

Martinez was appointed commissioner in the five-man SEC board on March 14, 2002 for a seven-year term.

He had been also been involved in the controversy surrounding the shuttered College Assurance Plan.

When the ailing pre-need company was facing congressional investigations and public outcry in 2005 about unpaid tuition fees of almost one million educational pre-need clients, Martinez was one of those who was still willing to give CAP a chance.

In the Senate and House hearings, he backed CAP-led proposals to relax financial and actuarial standards, which were the reasons CAP was found by SEC line managers to be already bankrupt. By relaxing SEC’s existing reporting standards, CAP would have been able to buy more time to entice additional clients whose fresh funds would pay for CAP’s obligations to old clients.

The SEC has not issued CAP a new dealers license since CAP was not able to find a white knight when it was financially hemorrhaging from 2003 onwards. With Lala Rimando