AMLC asked to get documents seized in raid on office of Piatco lawyer

MANILA, Philippines - Sen. Panfilo Lacson asked the Anti-Money Laundering Council to work for the acquisition of documents seized and sealed by the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in its 2006 raid on the office of the legal counsel of Philippine International Air Terminals Co. or PIATCO.

The request was made by Lacson in a recent hearing on the budget of the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) at the Senate where he detailed multi-million remittances made from the Philippines to two shell companies registered in the British Virgin Islands in 2004.

Lacson said the two shell companies, Jet Stream Pacific Ltd. and Mainland Global Ltd., received remittances from the Philippines in the amounts of $1 million, $894,000 and $1 million.

Lacson said the shell corporations were registered in April and May of 2001 and dissolved on the same day in 2004 “after the two corporations achieved their purpose to accept remittances from the Republic of the Philippines.”

AMLC executive director Vicente Aquino said he was aware of the transactions and can recall the names of some of the persons involved but not the actual amounts of the transactions.

Two years after the remittances were made, the ICAC raided the Hong Kong offices of the Romulo Mabanta, Buenaventura Sayoc and De Los Angeles law firm, which served as the legal counsel of PIATCO in its cases in Washington and Singapore for just compensation for the NAIA-3 project.

Previous reports indicated that the raids conducted may have been related to the suspicion that funds moved around between executives of Fraport AG, the German partner of PIATCO for the NAIA-3 project, PIATCO officers and Alfredo Liongson, who was in charge of a public relations campaign for PIATCO.

The Arroyo administration discovered several anomalies in the NAIA-3 project, including what it believed to be bloated costs for its construction.

The Romulo Mabanta law office challenged the raid in court and demanded the return of the documents seized by the ICAC, citing lawyer-client confidentiality.

Lacson said that the case is still pending with the Hong Kong appellate court and that the documents have all been sealed.

He told Aquino that the AMLC may be able to make a representation on behalf of the Philippine government – if it was the one that sought the conduct of the raid – to unseal the documents and bring these to Manila.

“Now you have to get to the bottom of this case... We’ll find a can of worms, so to speak,” Lacson said.