It’s final.
Business tycoon Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco did not acquire his 20-percent shares in San Miguel Corp. (SMC) using the disputed coco levy funds.
Moving swiftly, the Supreme Court on Tuesday voted to plug the government’s bid to run after Cojuangco’s 16,276,879 shares in SMC, the country’s largest food and beverage conglomerate.
Court spokesperson Midas Marquez said the high tribunal denied with finality the motion for reconsideration filed by lawyers of the coconut farmers and the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) of its April 12 decision.
Marquez said the court held in a minute resolution that there were no substantial arguments presented in the motion on the basic issues that had been passed by the magistrates earlier.
The PCGG has been trying to forfeit Cojuangco’s ownership of the SMC, claiming he used the coco levy to buy the block of shares when he was still the head of United Coconut Planters Bank.
The PCGG said Cojuangco, President Aquino’s uncle, also used credit advances from the Coconut Industry Investment Funds to finance his acquisition of the SMC shares.
In an en banc deliberation, the tribunal threw out the motion for reconsideration filed by PCGG and former Senators Jovito Salonga and Wigberto Tañada seeking a reversal of its April 12 ruling.
In its April decision, the magistrates affirmed the Sandiganbayan’s 2007 resolution junking the PCGG’s claim that Cojuangco’s shares were bought using public funds from the coco levy.
They said the PCGG had failed to present enough evidence to support its claim that Cojuangco acquired his SMC shares using Marcos’ ill-gotten wealth.
The high court also sustained the Sandiganbayan’s ruling lifting the eight writs of sequestration the PCGG had issued against Cojuangco’s assets.
It said “ill-gotten wealth would not include all properties of President Marcos… but only part that originated from the ‘vast resources of government.’”
“(T)he assets must have originated from government itself… (or) taken by (Marcos and his associates) by illegal means,” the court stressed.