2 Binay aides are billionaires

Vice President Jejomar Binay. CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA

When he was mayor of Makati City, Vice President Jejomar Binay was working with billionaires: his finance officer Gerardo “Gerry” Limlingan and longtime secretary Eduviges “Ebeng” Baloloy, according to the report submitted by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) to the Court of Appeals (CA) on May 7.

Limlingan and Baloloy are not related, but the AMLC found that besides individual bank accounts they also had joint accounts.

From 2007 to 2014, they had cash and checking accounts that contained at least P810 million in deposits and P1.629 billion in investment management funds in different banks.

The AMLC report also showed that Limlingan had joint accounts with Binay and with other alleged dummies of the Vice President and that the joint accounts also contained hundreds of millions of pesos in deposits.

The accounts of Limlingan and Baloloy were found in BDO Unibank, Metrobank, Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., Land Bank of the Philippines, Security Bank, Philippine Bank of Communications and Philippine Savings Bank.

Multimillion deposits

The AMLC report said the accounts contained billions of pesos in deposits.

A table of transactions prepared by the AMLC showed the biggest amount deposited to the pair’s account at BDO Unibank was P100 million. The deposit was made on Dec. 22, 2009.

Less than a month after that, on Jan. 18, 2010, P50 million was deposited in another joint account of Limlingan and Baloloy in the same bank, the AMLC said.

There were smaller deposits but these were also in the millions. The smaller deposits were made between bulk deposits, the report said.

The table of transactions also showed that two or three deposits were made to the different accounts of Limlingan and Baloloy in a single day.

On March 3, 2010, a total of P77 million was deposited in Baloloy’s account at BDO Unibank, the report said.

Two weeks earlier, on Feb. 23, 2010, P40 million was deposited in another joint account of Limlingan and Baloloy, it said.

‘AMLC wrong’

Sought for comment on Saturday, Joey Salgado, Binay’s spokesperson, declined to discuss the AMLC findings about Limlingan and Baloloy and instead referred the Inquirer to a press statement issued by Limlingan’s lawyer Grace Reyes.

In the statement, Reyes denied the contents of the AMLC report, saying Limlingan was a legitimate businessman.

Referring to the AMLC report of fund transfers to Canada, Reyes said the US dollar transfers from Philippine to Canadian banks between 2008 and 2014 involved legitimate transactions with third parties, including payments to Canadian market research firm.