PCGG, Sol-Gen going after P429M in PTIC arrears

Government lawyers in a motion filed Tuesday asked the Sandiganbayan to order the Philippine Telecommunications Investment Corp. (PTIC) to remit P429.14 million in dividends and other earnings which the Commission on Audit said PTIC “willfully withheld" from the national treasury. Some of the PTIC arrears dates to as far back as 1993, stemming from government control of 111,415 PTIC shares through the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG). In their 17-page motion, the PCGG and the Office of the Solicitor-General asked the anti-graft tribunal to order PTIC to explain why it failed to remit dividends from 1993 to 1997 and in 2001. The PCGG and OSG said they also have evidence of under declaration of dividends in the years 2000 and 2006. The COA arrived at its computation of the arrears in an audit the ended with the release of a report in May 2004. “(T)he COA report revealed that PTIC has willfully withheld the declaration of dividends out of the earnings of PLDT in some given years, resulting in the loss of the Republic. To say that PTIC is not bound by the execution of the decision would be to render the Resolution… useless and amount to unjust enrichment on the part of PTIC at the expense of the Republic," the PCGG and OSG said.. Prime Holdings Inc. has majority control of PTIC. Prime Holdings acquired the PTIC shares “by virtue of three Deeds of Assignment executed by PTIC stockholders Ramon Cojuangco and Luis Tirso Rivilla." In February 2007, the PCGG sold the PTIC shares to First Pacific, a Hongkong-based investment firm, for P25.217 billion. But it was only in April 2009, when the Supreme Court declared that those shares were “owned by the Republic of the Philippines." — ELR/VS, GMA News