Three executives of a shoe firm have been convicted by the Sandiganbayan of nine counts of graft for conspiracy to receive P36.9 million in behest loans forty-three years ago.
In a March 26 resolution, the Sandiganbayan’s five-member Special Third Division sentenced Leticia Teodoro, Marfina Singian and Gregorio Singian, three former officials of the Integrated Shoe Inc. (ISI), to suffer an imprisonment of six years and one month to 10 years for each count of graft.
But Dennis Pulma, clerk of court, said Teodoro and the Singians have been given 15 days to file a motion for reconsideration to challenge the order.
“The three appeared during the promulgation,” he told The Standard.
Despite their old age, Teodoro and company showed up during the March 26 promulgation, he said.
The anti-graft court said the former shoe company executives conspired with former officials of the Philippine National Bank, then the government’s depository bank, to secure loans of P36.8 million from 1972 to 1980 without any collateral.
According to court evidence presented by the prosecution, ISI was able to get a five-year confirmed and irrevocable loan credit of P16.3 million from PNB in 1972 for the purchase of plant equipment despite a P1-million capitalization.
The firm also managed to secure eight other loans from PNB despite inadequate equity and collateral until 1980 for the purchase of raw materials for production.
Because of ISI’s debt of P71.8 million in 1983, the bank foreclosed only P5.3 million of ISI’s assets — a P3.9 million worth of plant equipment in Bataan and a P1.4-million real estate mortgage of a Caloocan City property.
“The evidence showed that the loan transactions granted to ISI were grossly and manifestly disadvantageous to the government because the ISI lacked sufficient capitalization and adequate collateral,” the 37-page decision read.
The shoe company was one of the 419 corporations investigated by the Presidential Commission on Good Government for behest loans.
Implicated were former PNB vice president for Europe Panfilo . Domingo, director Domingo Ingco, senior executive vice president Constantino Bautista and ISI vice president Tomas Teodoro, who has already passed away.
Associate Justice Samuel Martires issued a 13-page dissent, Two magistrates, however, citing Ingco and Bautista could not be charged since they were not members of the board of directors that approved the ISI’s loans.