Inquirer files
MANILA, Philippines — A Pasay City court has found five officers of a lending company guilty of submitting fake documents related to their registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the corporate watchdog said on Monday.
In a statement, the regulator said the Pasay Metropolitan Trial Court Branch 47 found that Jerlie Singh, Erlinda Ocampo, Elaine Ocampo, Erwin Ocampo and Amarjit Singh of All-in 7,000 Lending and Trading Corp. violated Article 172(1) of the Revised Penal Code (RPC) when they falsified public documents in 2017.
Back then, the lending company submitted a certificate of bank deposit supposedly issued by the Banco de Oro Pasay-Two Shopping Center branch as part of its registration documents.
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Under Republic Act No. 9474, or the Lending Company Regulation Act of 2007, lending firms applying for registration with the SEC must provide proof of paid-up capital, or money received from shareholders and investors that also determines a company’s net value.
In this case, All-in 7,000 claimed to have P1 million in paid-up capital.
But the SEC later found that the certificate was fake and not issued by the bank.
The lending firm’s officials were sentenced to a maximum of two years and two months of imprisonment and a fine of P5,000 each.
In its decision dated June 25, the court said that All-in 7,000’s “reliance on fixers” to get a bank certificate proved they knew the documents were fake, on top of the fact that they appeared not to have the money required for registration.
All-in 7,000 was among the 18 lending firms named in a July 2017 complaint filed by the SEC Enforcement and Investor Protection Department in the Pasay Prosecutor’s Office for falsifying documents.
The SEC noted that it has so far secured the conviction of 17 individuals for violating the RPC. —Meg J. Adonis with Erica Ann C. Villasorda