OFWs file complaint at NBI against investment firm for failing to give payouts

MANILA, Philippines — Several overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) filed a complaint at the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) against an investment firm that focuses on livestock farming for allegedly failing to give them the payouts as stated in their contracts.

In their complaint, which was filed at the NBI Anti-Organized and Transnational Crime Division, the OFWs said they invested their money — collectively amounting to millions — in DV Boer, a farm that breeds various livestock like goats and cattle.

They said they were supposed to receive dividends a year after investing. That would have been last February and March. But they did not receive anything.

“We did not get any payouts,” Antonio Alvarez, an engineer working in Qatar, told reporters on Thursday.

The DV Boer management told them the company was encountering “economic difficulties” and asked for another year to be allowed to recover.

But then the COVID-19 pandemic came last March and the company also used that as a reason for its inability to give the payouts, Alvarez added.

The one year that the management asked will lapse in February 2021.

Alvarez said he invested “less than P10 million.“

He added that he had invested P2 million earlier, which he got back along with a 30-percent profit. So he and a few others invested again as they decided the company was “legit.”

“My contract is three years,” he said. “So every year I am entitled to receive the 30 percent return on my investment. So okay, we agreed. But as of now, it’s almost two years. So because they said: ‘Let’s give it a year to recover. So we waited.”

“But the issue, it’s like they just whetted our appetite [parang pinasarap lang],” Alvarez said. “Of course, because I got the capital back, we were encouraged. It’s legit after all. The problem is when we invested additional capital — that’s when we had a problem.”

Another investor, Irish Fajilagot Alfon, said they finally decided to file a complaint because the DV Boer management had been harassing people asking for updates on their investments.

According to Alfon, the main reason why she invested money in DV Boer was because of its goal of helping the government maintain food security through investments that would be used as capital for farms.

She explained that DV Boer’s program had similarities to the “pa-iwi” scheme in provinces: Capital is generated from outside investments, while part of the earnings from livestock — which may produce offspring — would be shared with the investors.

She said there seemed to be a “flaw” in the system of DV Boer.

According to her, on signing the contract, investors were given a guarantee. If, for example, a goat dies, there is insurance that will allow the goat to be replaced.

“Now, they tell us in our Zoom meetings: ‘You knew that this business you got into has risks,’” she said. “But it wasn’t discussed during the presentation of the business to us. If they had said it, if they had been honest, then we would have thought about it.”

INQUIRER.net tried to contact the DV Boer management but had not received a reply as of this writing.

As it turned out, this is not the first time the company was involved in a controversy.

In 2017, a group of meat dealers in Lian, Batangas — where DV Boer is based — asked the municipal government to close the shop being operated by the said company for selling lower priced meat products — placing meat sellers at a disadvantage.

The dispute was settled, however, after both sides agreed to a compromise, despite DV Boer owner Dexter Villamin saying that his company’s products cost less, with operating expenses kept low as a result of livestock being raised locally.

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