'Legacy owner enjoying special treatment'

MANILA, Philippines - Celso de los Angeles, owner of the failed Legacy Group of companies who is facing syndicated estafa charges in various courts, is enjoying special treatment, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman revealed yesterday.

He said De los Angeles has been allowed to transfer from the St. Luke’s Hospital in Quezon City, where he has been confined for cancer treatment and where arrest orders were served on him, to a nearby condominium.

“If Celso de los Angeles is fit to be discharged from his hospital confinement, then he must be incarcerated pending trial for non-bailable crimes. From his hospital bed, he must be taken straight to a prison cell,” he said.

“Did the Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors oppose the transfer? What is the DOJ doing now to rectify this injudicious special treatment, if not apparent anomaly?” he asked.

He said he has written Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera to protest the special treatment that De los Angeles is getting, but he has not received a formal response from the DOJ chief.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC) filed the syndicated estafa charges after investigating the shuttered Legacy Group of rural banks and pre-need companies.

The two agencies unearthed an intricate web of business practices that allegedly defrauded bank depositors and pre-need customers.

Lagman’s Albay constituents were among Legacy’s victims.

When the House investigated what was labeled as the Legacy scam, BSP Deputy Gov. Nestor Espenilla described the De los Angeles group of companies as “an organized syndicate.”

“We are not dealing here with the sad situation of banks failing due to business reversals, global economic turmoil, or even regulatory harassment as falsely claimed by Celso de los Angeles and his allies,” Espenilla told congressmen.

“Rather, we are dealing here with an organized syndicate that from Day One was created to exploit human nature and weak links in the legal, regulatory and enforcement framework of our banking and financial systems for the purpose of large-scale gathering of people’s savings,” he said.

He said people’s deposits were diverted “through fraudulent means for the syndicate’s purposes” and “through a web of fictitious loans and self-dealing investments.”

He said taxpayers, through the state-owned PDIC, have been “left holding the proverbial empty bag.”

Espenilla pointed out that Legacy depositors were not entirely blameless, since they “actively co-opted on the tantalizing promise of high-yield returns and full principal protection, courtesy of the PDIC.”

He said clients agreed to split their accounts so these would be covered by the deposit insurance law.

The PDIC has already paid billions to depositors of Legacy’s rural banks. The failed rural banks reportedly collected a total of P14 billion in deposits.