October 6, 2003, The Manila Times, PCGG asks Sandigan to declare San Miguel state-owned corporation, by Cheryl M. Arcibal,

October 6, 2003, The Manila Times, PCGG asks Sandigan to declare San Miguel state-owned corporation, by Cheryl M. Arcibal, Reporter

THE Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) has asked the Sandiganbayan Special Division to declare food and beverage giant San Miguel Corp. (SMC) as state-owned, arguing that San Miguel’s chair, Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr., did not spend a single centavo in acquiring shares in the company.

In a 71-page reply, the PCGG and the Office of the Solicitor General noted that Cojuangco himself had admitted that he was an official of the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA), the United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB) and the Coconut Industry Investment Fund (CIIF), which administered and held coconut-levy funds at the time of acquisition of San Miguel shares during the administration of former President Ferdinand Marcos.

“It is therefore undisputed that, when he [Cojuangco] acquired ‘his’ SMC shares in 1983, Cojuangco held three concurrent positions, that had to do with control over the coconut-levy funds, including its collection [PCA], administration [UCPB] and investment [CIIF Oil Mills and UCPB]. It should also be undisputed that in all of these positions, Cojuangco assumed fiduciary obligations with respect to the coconut-levy funds. There is no claim that these funds were his personal funds,” the government contended.

The government also maintained that the money used by Cojuangco in the acquisition of SMC shares came from UCPB and CIIF oil mills, of which he was an officer.

The PCGG said Cojuangco “says he obtained ‘loans’ from the UCPB and ‘advances’ from the CIIF Oil Mills. He even goes as far as to admit that his only evidence in this case would have been ‘records of UCPB’ and a ‘representative of the CIIF Oil Mills.’ Obviously, the ‘records of UCPB’ relate to the ‘loans’ that Cojuangco maintains to have obtained from UCPB—of which he was president and chief executive officer—while the ‘representative of the CIIF Oil Mills’ will obviously testify on the ‘advances’ Cojuangco obtained from the CIIF Oil Mills—of which he was also the president and CEO.”

The government had recently asked for the forfeiture of 59.7 percent of San Miguel under Cojuangco’s control and 5.4 percent under former senator Juan Ponce Enrile, the Jaka Investment Corp. and ACCRA Investment Corp.

Cojuangco was accused of taking advantage of “his close association” with the Marcoses and using the defendant corporations as “dummies” to borrow and use coconut-levy funds to acquire San Miguel shares.