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PIATCO case makes erring investors accountable


Updated 6:51 p.m. The plan to file a criminal suit against officials of Philippine International Air Terminals Co. Inc. (PIATCO) and German transport firm Fraport AG signifies that the Aquino administration is determined to make erring investors accountable, Presidential deputy spokesperson Abigail Valte said Sunday. "We want to make the people who were responsible for it accountable whether investor or not," Valte said in an interview over government radio dzRB after getting wind of a statement by PIATCO branding the move as a "weapon of terror." "Hindi naman po iyan dahil investor hindi dapat sumunod sa batas. May batas tayo. Iyon ang dapat sundin. Kapag hindi po nasunod iyan, somebody should be accountable (It doesn't mean that an investor may no longer heed the law. We have laws. That's what should be heeded. That is the law. If that isn't heeded, somebody should be accountable)," she said. On Saturday, PIATCO decried as a "weapon of terror" the DOJ's plan to file a criminal suit against PIATCO and Fraport executives for alleged violation of the Anti-Dummy Law. PIATCO said the DOJ's move will set a bad precedent on foreign investments in the Philippines. It added that the DOJ's resolution will affect President Benigno Aquino III's public-private partnership initiative. Weapon against friendly foreign investors? "The decision to file the criminal charge [after deliberately allowing the resolution of the complaint to remain pending for several years] is truly alarming, not only for the named respondents, but also for current and future foreign investors in the country," said Moises Tolentino Jr., PIATCO's vice president for legal and administrative affairs. "This charge cannot but be viewed as a weapon of terror that the State is prepared to employ, and is in fact now employing, against its hapless subjects. Sadly, it is also being used against its hapless subjects. Sadly, it is also being used against our friendly foreign investors. For what reason, only its concerned officials can answer," PIATCO continued. GMANews.TV is still trying to contact Justice Undersecretary Francisco Baraan III, who signed the DOJ resolution on Jan. 21, 2011. The resolution found probable cause to indict more than a dozen PIATCO and Fraport officials for violation of the Anti-Dummy Law. Fraport and PIATCO are the builders of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 (NAIA-3). The 1987 Constitution and the Anti-Dummy Law provide that in a "nationalized activity" like the building of the NAIA-3, only 40-percent foreign equity is allowed. The remaining 60 percent is reserved to Filipino citizens. The DOJ said that Fraport, in arbitration request with Washington-based International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), had categorically admitted "it directly and indirectly owns 61.44 percent of PIATCO." The DOJ then said, "In this specific case, corporate officers of Fraport and PIATCO are being made criminally answerable for allowing Fraport to use Philippine corporations as fronts to conceal the extent of its actual investment of shareholdings in PIATCO," said the DOJ. 'Favored businessmen' backing Anti-Dummy charge But PIATCO, in its statement, alleged that "favored business personalities" may have been in connivance with government lawyers. "They [DOJ] know that the government lawyers, in cahoots with their favored business personalities, will use the Anti-Dummy charge as its last card in its fight against the NAIA-3 investors, who — their backs having been pushed to the wall — dared to sue the government in international courts," said PIATCO. It did not identify the supposedly favored businessmen up in arms against PIATCO and Fraport. PIATCO also cast doubts on the DOJ's resolution, because of the Philippine government's recent "defeat" at an international arbitration body in Washington. Late last year, ICSID issued a decision asserting the right of Fraport to file an arbitration case against the Philippines. That prompted the German government to increase its pressure to resolve the case and compensate Fraport. On Saturday PIATCO said, “Both in timing and in tenability, the DOJ's decision is highly suspect." "The Philippine government has just suffered a telling defeat in the second round of its legal battle with Fraport in the latter's effort to get protection of its $425 million investment in the NAIA Terminal 3 project before the ICSID in Washington DC," it added. Criticizing the Aquino government PIATCO also questioned the Aquino administration's resolve to rid government of corruption supposedly inherited from the nine-year administration of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The Arroyo government took over the project in 2007 after persistent questions about the original contract and charges of mismanagement. Talks between the government and Fraport led to an extortion complaint filed by the latter with the World Bank. On Saturday, PIATCO said that the DOJ's resolution "is a disappointing move by the Aquino government — to say the least, one that does not help to create and sustain belief in its vow to be different from the past unlamented Arroyo administration." "Having suffered tormenting harassment from the highest officials of government for the past nine years, PIATCO and its stockholders, whose only fault was to respond to the invitation of the government to fund the construction of a modern international airport terminal, view this latest in a long series of government's unjust and unwarranted acts of persecution as truly unbearable, undemocratic, and inhuman," said PIATCO. — With a report by Jesse Edep/VS, GMANews.TV
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