Speaker’s help sought in arrest of party-list solon

House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez. —PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER

A lawyer will seek the “cooperation” of Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez in serving the warrant of arrest against 1-Pacman party-list Rep. Michael “Mikee” Romero for allegedly stealing funds from the family-owned Harbour Centre Port Terminal Inc. (HCPTI), operator of the Manila North Harbor.

Jerome Canlas, lawyer of businessman Reghis Romero II, Mikee’s father, said he would write a letter of courtesy to Alvarez to inform Congress on the arrest warrant against Mikee and his alleged cohorts—Edwin Jeremillo and Felicia Aquino—for qualified theft, a nonbailable offense.

Canlas said the police could not locate Mikee in his home address to serve the arrest warrant issued on Nov. 6 by Manila Regional Trial Court  Branch 11 Judge Cicero Jurado Jr. for stealing corporate funds with the issuance of 18 checks worth P3.4 million to nonexisting payees in 2007.

Mikee has made himself scarce since the issuance of the arrest order. He was absent on the first day of session of the House of Representatives.

“We will write a letter to the Speaker out of courtesy on the enforcement of a court order against one of his members. We hope they cooperate because it is an arrest warrant,” Canlas said.

In his order, Jurado recommended no bail in the arrest of  Mikee, Jeremillo and Aquino.

The case was filed by Canlas, who accused Mikee of purloining HCPTI’s’ corporate funds by issuing 18 checks totaling P3.4 million to the “National Food Authority and/or Felicia T. Aquino.”

The arrest order came just four months after the Department of Justice reversed the July 1 resolution by the Office of the City Prosecutor of Manila to indict Mikee and his co-accused  before the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 28.

A day before, Judge Edgar Dalmacio Santos of Regional Trial Court Branch 222 in Quezon City issued a preliminary injunction against Mikee barring him from representing himself as an owner and officer of HCPTI especially in the sale or transfer of assets to another firm; and from acting as HCTPI’s representative in Manila North Harbor.

Santos said the documents used by Mikee to control Harbour Terminal were “forged” as the deeds of assignment were almost identical in date and document number, except for the additional paragraph in one deed which ordered the assignment of shares “the existence of which is not denied or disputed by the defendants.”