San Juan trader’s murder mystery: Where is the money?

KELVIN Tan, owner of a construction company, was gunned down by unknown assailants as he boarded his car shortly after withdrawing money from a bank in Greenhills, San Juan City on Monday. MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

MANILA, Philippines — Where’s the money?

The man who reportedly received the estimated P800,000  that a Filipino-Chinese businessman reportedly encashed from a bank before he was shot dead Monday morning in San Juan City has denied receiving such amount, prompting investigators to wonder where the cash, if any, could have gone.

The man identified as Reggie Guadayo, bodyguard of one Benedict Tiu, told police he was not given any money by Kelvin Tan, 34, prior to his death, Senior Supt. Bernardo Tambaoan, chief of police, said.

Tan, the owner of KT Builders Inc., was shot dead by a gunman in his vehicle parked at the corner of Ortigas Ave. and Madison St.

Police earlier said Tan had withdrawn P800,000 from a nearby Chinabank before he was killed by a still-unidentified gunman, who then sped away on board a motorcycle with an alleged cohort.

Tambaoan later clarified that based on some tellers’ accounts, the victim encashed a check worth an estimated P800,000 prior to his death.

Authorities, however, never found the money on the victim or inside his vehicle, but received information the money had been given to Guadayo, the bodyguard of the victim’s friend Tiu.

Tambaoan said Guadayo told police, however, that it was the businessman who borrowed from Tiu some P200,000, which Guadayo said was handed over to him before he was attacked.

“But we didn’t find (that amount of money) on the victim or in the car,” Tambaoan said.

He also noted that the gunman was not holding anything else other than the murder weapon after the attack, a crime that was caught in the closed-circuit television camera of a nearby establishment.

“So where’s the money–the P800,000 or the P200,000?” he asked.

He said Guadayo would undergo a lie-detector test.

He added that police were also checking the possibility that a cohort of the gunman took the money — whether the P800,000 or the P200,000 — from the victim during the attack.