Sergio Osmeña III. INQUIRER file photo
The widow of lawyer Benjamin Pinpin has cleared the current officials of state-owned Development Bank of the Philippines of allegations that they drove the former DBP lawyer into committing suicide, Senator Sergio Osmeña III said Tuesday.
Osmeña, chairman of the Senate committee on banks, said Pinpin’s wife, Amalia, also told senators that her husband was himself “bothered” by waivers that the old DBP board had granted to Roberto Ongpin so the businessman could get two loans amounting to P660 million in 2009.
“He obviously felt that there was something wrong, because he was complaining to his wife Amy about the waivers,” Osmeña said.
The senator noted that there were 10 waivers. “He was bothered because Benjie felt that he covered up when he did not object to so many waivers because that was not standard whenever they grant loans,” Osmeña said.
“At the same time, he said that if he told members of the board that [fact], hindi naman nila siya pinapansin (he would just be ignored). His wife felt he was helpless about the entire thing,” the senator added.
Ongpin used the loans to acquire from the DBP 50 million shares of Philex Mining Corp., the country’s biggest gold and copper mining firm, at P12.75 each. He later sold the shares, along with a big block of Philex shares, to Manuel V. Pangilinan in December 2009 for P21 each, earning for Ongpin a huge profit.
Osmeña’s committee has yet to wrap up its investigation of Ongpin’s DBP loans. The businessman, a former Philex director, is also being probed for alleged insider trading.
The senator said Pinpin’s family had authorized him to clear the present DBP board because the discussion with senators took place in an executive session on December 6 last year.
“Please tell the public that the new DBP board is absolutely blameless (over the suicide),” the senator quoted the family as telling him.
Pinpin took his own life in August last year while the current DBP officials were in the thick of investigating the loans extended to Ongpin’s Deltaventure Resources Inc.
Pinpin was allegedly pressured by the new board into executing an affidavit and into going against his former colleagues in the bank.
Executive session
Osmeña said he opted to discuss what was partly tackled during the executive session because Ongpin’s camp had been bringing up the issue of Pinpin’s suicide.
“The friends of Bobby Ongpin have been bringing it up as if it was such a deciding factor in Benjie Pinpin’s death,” he said.
DBP legal chief Benilda Tejada, Pinpin’s immediate superior at the bank, told the Inquirer last year that the midlevel DBP lawyer was driven to depression after he received successive letters from the bank’s board of directors threatening imminent legal action for his role in a purportedly anomalous loan to Ongpin.
Tejada said Pinpin was particularly distraught over the fact that he remained a subject of the second round of “show-cause” letters issued to some 20 DBP officers and staff, despite his having cooperated with the new board and having complied fully with the first show-cause letter sent to him in May.
“When the second show-cause letter came, that’s when his troubles really started,” Tejada said.
The DBP filed on Aug. 5, 2011, a criminal complaint of graft and violation of banking laws against 25 past and current officers and three individuals, including Ongpin, in connection with the loans granted to the businessman.