Reimbursing Piatco for bribery expenses

Today the government irretrievably will lose P3 billion. A Pasay City court has ordered the Ninoy Aquino International Airport to forfeit the sum to Piatco. It is merely an initial "just compensation" for government’s expropriation of NAIA Terminal-3. No one knows how much more the judge will award Piatco. What is clear is that it deserves no payment in the first place. No less than the Supreme Court, the Senate and Malacañang have found that the company built the facility shoddily and under corrupt terms, therefore void. With such conclusiveness, it is Piatco that must pay - for its crimes of bribery, money laundering and dummying. But in this land where rule of law is measured in pesos, funny things can happen on the way to the courthouse.

One such event was why government filed for expropriation at all. To begin with, legal beagles point out, government cannot expropriate from itself. Here, the government’s Bases Conversion & Development Authority owns the land on which NAIA-3 rose. Piatco’s build-operate contract on the terminal merely leases the BCDA land to it. What government should have filed was a case for recovery of possession. After all, for a year and a half after the High Court ruling, the erring Piatco had refused to vacate the terminal.

If the right suit were filed, what the judge would be computing today is how much Piatco spent on the structure - minus its bribes to officials for favorably altering its original contract four times. From initial audits, this would run to roughly $170 million - much lower than the $565 million that Piatco is claiming in a separate arbitration in Singapore. No one but no one may collect reimbursements for graft.

Proof of bribery had long surfaced. Piatco bagman Alfonso Santos Liongson had opened a Banco de Oro dollar savings account (#290061717) on June 30, 2000, and a peso account (#290070090) on Nov. 28, 2000. Both accounts were held jointly with a certain Leonardo Canlas Gonzales. The bank record states: "referred by Mrs. Lilia Cheng, valued client, and Cheng Yong, owners of Glee International. The latter is also the chairman of Piatco. From the accounts, amounts were withdrawn to sate officials who were easing construction terms, specifications and designs.

Liongson, a retired pharmaceutical salesman, deposited a P4,720,000-check on the day he opened account 290070090. But he and Gonzales were never the beneficial owners of the deposits. On Sept. 27, 2000 Gonzales authorized Cheng to withdraw $88,100 from account 290061717, and again on Dec. 8, 2000 to withdraw P4,690,000 from account 290070090.

The transactions were oblivious to the toppling of one government and the rise of another. On Feb. 13, 2001 Gonzales again authorized Cheng to withdraw $475,000 from account 290061717.

Then came on June 22, 2001 a consultancy contract from Cheng to Liongson. Contract amount: $2.2 million, payable in two installments, contingent on the altering of 77 contract conditions that Piatco could not meet. Against it two weeks earlier on June 5, however, Liongson was already billing Cheng $1 million, to be remitted to HSBC Account #485-6-605763. In a record two weeks Liongson completed his tasks, and thus received the $1.2-million balance.

Liongson’s account #485-6-605763 was in the name of Jetsstream Pacific Ltd. His other account #485-5-605764 was in the name of Mainland Global Ltd. Both companies were incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in Apr.-May 2001 by RMBSA Nominees Limited of Hong Kong, an affiliate of Piatco’s law firm in Manila, Romulo Mabanta Buenaventura Sayoc delos Angeles (RMBSA).

Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption raided the offices of RMBSA Nominees in search of evidence against laundering. It found out that the firm was already operating under a new name, RMBSA Corporate Services Ltd., holding the same office in the island as the law firm. Too, that two of the shareholder-directors of RMBSA Corporate Services, Joseph Alejandro and Jose Buenaventura, were connected with the law firm.

Alejandro dissolved Jetstream and Mainland Global on July 13, 2004 but not after both Liongson accounts had paid $6.457 million more. Among the payees were Cheng and Liongson themselves.

Presumably those huge amounts are now being paid to lawyers to get Cheng off the hook. Liongson, meanwhile, has fled to California, where he reportedly has acquired a good tan from thrice-weekly golfing.

Last March 31 the government was planning to open NAIA-3. How it would have done so was left unexplained. But the Pasay court specifically had ruled since Dec. for government make a down payment of P3 billion first for the expropriation – yet it was no guarantee that it may already re-bid or operate NAIA-3. Fortuitously, the government backed out when the entrance ceiling collapsed three days before inaugural.

Still, the judge will favor Piatco today with P3 billion. Ironically the amount is being awarded to an erring firm that does not even recognize the court’s jurisdiction. So if Cheng paid himself millions of dollars and pesos from bagman Liongson and later used the loot to hire good lawyers, that P3 billion would come in handy for further legal services. More than that, it could be used for still another wave of payoffs - the type that entices government officials to lose cases by filing the wrong ones. So who says crime does not pay?

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