3 bank execs exonerated in 17-yr-old case

The Sandiganbayan  has cleared three bank officials of graft charges over the Philippine National Bank-Republic Bank’s purchase 17 years ago of P56 million worth of Treasury bills from another bank which supposedly failed to deliver them.

Acquitted of graft were Romeo Macaranas, former vice president of  PNB-Republic Bank (PNB-RB), and Jimmy Dumlao and Patricia Tagulinao of Planters Development Bank (PDB).

The now defunct PNB-RB was a subsidiary of PNB, which used to be a government-owned and -controlled corporation. PNB-RB has since been sold to Maybank.

In 1994, Macaranas approved several purchase orders for P125-million worth of T-bills from PDB at the  discounted price of P121 million.

PNB-RB paid for the T-bills with two manager’s checks. Despite the payment, PDB only delivered P69 million worth of T-bills, leaving P56-million worth undelivered.

The prosecution had alleged that Macaranas conspired with Dumlao and Tagulinao for the simulated sale of P56 million worth of T-bills, for which the PNB-RB paid P53.881 million, and which the PDB never delivered, to the government’s disadvantage.

Dumlao and Tagulinao had prepared the trading orders.

Macaranas said that he approved the release of the manager’s checks to PDB despite the incomplete delivery since PDB had an approved credit line of P100 million with PNB-RB, and this was more than the P56 million worth of undelivered T-bills.

According to him, he considered the value of the undelivered T-bills as part of PDB’s use of its credit line.

But he later demanded the release of the rest of the T-bills but was told by PDB that they would be delivered by Bancapital Development Corp. PDB argued that it had only acted as a conduit between PNB-RB and Bancapital.

In its ruling, the Sandiganbayan First Division said the evidence did not support the contention that the sale had been simulated.

It said the sale appeared to be a regular transaction, but that the delivery was short of P56 million worth of T-bills.

It also said that the prosecution failed to show a conspiracy between Macaranas, Dumlao and Tagulinao in the supposedly questionable transactions.

The prosecution had argued that there was a conspiracy because Macaranas instructed his traders to deal with PDB, while Dumlao and Tagulinao prepared the trading orders at their end. It also said Macaranas approved the release of payment despite the incomplete delivery, and that the PNB-RB’s trading orders were not checked by the bank’s vice president for loans and discounts.

But according to the court, there was no proof of what had motivated the bank officers to supposedly simulate the transactions.  Leila B. Salaverria