‘Senators prejudged me’

Businessman Roberto Ongpin can’t wait to wade into the fray, having so far escaped tough interrogation during the first two Senate hearings into the controversial loans that he got from the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP).

At the same time, Ongpin believes it would be impossible to sway the senators from their opinions about the case, regardless of what facts he presents.

“Absolutely not. They have prejudged it already,” he said, when asked if he would get a “fair shake” in the ongoing joint blue ribbon and committee on banks inquiry into the DBP loans.

Despite this, Ongpin said he is raring to attend the hearings, if only to show that he has nothing to hide.

“It would give me great pleasure to show up and be subjected to their pillory,” he said in a telephone interview from Europe where he is on a business trip.

“They should hit me, not Rey David,” said Ongpin, a former trade minister of the Marcos regime.

On Friday, Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Sergio Osmeña III took turns interrogating David, the former DBP president, and taking him to task for approving the P660-million loan to Ongpin’s company—a transaction which they have described as “behest.”

Senators have also suggested that Ongpin must have had a powerful backer—commonly believed to be his friend, Jose Miguel Arroyo, the husband of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo—for him to have been able to secure the loan which they alleged was approved by the DBP with “undue haste.”

From ‘behest’ to ‘insider’

As Ongpin had noted in the full-page ad he took out in the Inquirer last Oct. 13, the investigating senators on Friday shifted the focus of their probe from the “behest” issue to alleged “insider trading” violations—something which Ongpin called “preposterous.”

According to Enrile, Ongpin “took advantage of inside information that he alone knew” when he bought the DBP’s Philex Mining Corp. shares at P12.75 per share and sold them to businessman Manuel Pangilinan a few weeks later at P21 per share.

Aquino government officials and the senators apparently believe that had the DBP held off from selling its 50 million Philex shares to Ongpin, it would have earned P400 million from the subsequent market appreciation.

Enrile dismissed David’s contention that when he sold the DBP’s Philex shares to Ongpin he had no way of knowing that the Philex share price would shoot up a few weeks later.

20/20 hindsight

In Saturday’s phone interview, Ongpin said Enrile was condemning David’s decision with the “benefit of hindsight.”

“As we know, hindsight is always 20/20. Everybody’s a genius with hindsight,” he said.

“I can’t understand why a brilliant individual like Senator Enrile can’t see that,” he said.

Ongpin also pointed out that the senators ignored the testimony of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Deputy Governor Nestor Espenilla who said that central bank regulators found nothing amiss in the transaction since the DBP booked a hefty profit on it.

Heart goes out to David

Ongpin said he feels he’s being “persecuted” by the senators, but felt worse about what David is being put through.

“My heart goes out to Rey David,” he said, having just finished reading the transcripts of last Friday’s Senate hearing.

“He made tons of money for the bank and the government, and this is what he gets. He’s being pilloried,” he said.

He reiterated that he will return to the country on Oct. 25 and will appear at the Senate probe then.

Probe diverted

Despite the hostile reception that awaits him, he said he is “eager” and “anxious” to appear before the panel.

“Thank goodness, though, that it will not be the senators, who have already prejudged the case, who will decide on the issue, but the Ombudsman,” Ongpin said.

He also lamented that the Senate inquiry had already been diverted from its original mission, which was to investigate the circumstances behind the Aug. 2 suicide of DBP lawyer Benjamin Pinpin.

According to the Ongpin camp, the lawyer killed himself after he was pressured by the current DBP board to implicate David in the allegedly irregular transaction.

“They have now sidestepped the original issue here, which was what pushed Attorney Pinpin to take his own life,” Ongpin said.

First posted 1:06 am | Sunday, October 16th, 2011