Liquidation

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
4/5/2006



When a company goes bankrupt is solves its problem by liquidating assets, paying debts and ceasing operations. That’s how it’s been since time immemorial when financial managers and advisers wrestle with a company’s financial problems and insolvency. That is, until a great Filipino came up with a new accounting and financial system in saving a business or person from bankruptcy. Now, the Philippines will be immortalized in the financial and accounting textbooks thanks allegedly to Chavit Singson who has a new financial liquidation scheme –liquidation of the auditor or partner.

It looks like a novel way of solving financial problems but the likes of the Mafia’s Al Capone used to do it during Chicago’s Prohibition era; but the world seems to have forgotten those methods since Capone was put behind bars by Elliot Nes of the FBI. That was a long time ago and a place faraway, in the 1920s in America. The method has been revived in the Philippines these days, although there’s one difference. While Capone was considered and arrested as a gangster by the U.S. authorities, here Capone’s premier alter ego an untouchable, much revered and feared hero of the powers that be.

The entire Philippine judicial forces of over a hundred thousand judges and justices, investigators and police officers, plus the hundred thousand or so armed forces, can not touch this Filipino who has made widows and widowers of families that have rubbed him the wrong way. No matter how mournful, pained and plaintive the cries and weeping of the bereaved families, mothers and children, and husbands like those of the Chan and Rafanan families, there seems no conscience or soul to hear them amongst those vested with the obligations to ensure justice in Philippine society.

COA auditor Agustin Chan was murdered as he was in the midst of investigating Chavit Singson’s tobacco tax un-liquidated advances amounting to over a billion pesos. Singson was literally pleading with President Estrada to get him off the hook by transferring Chan out of Ilocos Sur, a request Estrada refused because respect for the office of the COA. There was no way out for Singson unless he liquidated his cash advances from the tobacco funds, until Chan was instead liquidated not long after. The family of Agustin Chan pointedly looks at Chavit as their prime suspect.

The Chan family’s story today is heart rending. Reported by the Tribune, Mrs. Chan narrates how her daughter quit her law course because she had lost faith in the justice system in the country; likewise, a son has dropped out of school having lost faith in the “system” itself. How can a whole society allow itself to fail these young people? What has been done by the people vested with the duty and the powers to ensure the delivery of justice to the country’s citizens? Nothing! These victims are suffering while the culprit romps around society like an untouchable hero and superman.

The authorities and “respectable” people who form the elite of this society has reacted with absolutely nothing to the long list of suspected heinous crimes of the Filipino Al Capone version or to the appeal for justice of a lengthening list of victims. Not even the Church has said anything about this, in fact the unlamented late Cardinal Sin blessed this man twice or thrice over for his lies to the courts against an innocent and duly elected president of the land. I find it astonishing that there has been no groundswell of opprobrium for this Mafioso and I find this shameful of our society.

The Chan family is just one of a long list of families cruelly victimized by this local Mafioso. The Rafanan family lost its mother, a son and an uncle to the staccato bullets of machine guns intended to kill the head of family, Efren “Rambo” Rafanan. Most recently, the Umali family lost its father to bullets of hit men the wife and children attribute to Chavit Singson. If there is evidence that this society has failed in serving its citizens it is the continued liberty of such a menace of a creature o roam around the streets of country with his entourage of two dozen bodyguards.

The same Mafioso was caught smuggling in thousands of Taiwan motorcycles by none other than former intelligence chief Gen. Calimlim. What has happened to the case? The more conscientious authorities have caught counterfeit cigarette manufacturing and smuggling operations in this character warehouses in Ilocos, and they were reported in the newspapers; but again nothing came out of the investigation. How can the rest of the eighty-four million Filipinos be expected to respect the law while such a demonstrably corrupt character, to paraphrase the California court, run roughshod over the Law?

It’s been five years since COA auditor Agustin Chan was murdered, the murderer and mastermind seems to have found the most effective financial innovation to solve financial problem –liquidating the auditor, and others. It’s three years since the Rafanan’s lost three members to bullets, Umali’s body has yet to grow cold and the liquidations continue. Until when will this liquidation spree go on, who will be next, and which family will grieve tomorrow? Is there no end to the transgressions against the whole of society by this one menace?

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