March 15, 2010

BPI president Aurelio Montinola III has again passed up a rare chance to nail down financial finagling that infests the banking and state sectors and to advance corporate governance, causes that his Makati Business Club spends so much passion and finger-wagging on.

The chief executive of the Bank of the Philippine Islands was not only a no-show in Friday’s hearing at the Makati Regional Trial Court, but his BPI lawyers even wanted to quash the subpoena issued by Judge Selma Palacio Alaras.

Montinola is being summoned as an adverse witness by Philcomsat Holdings chairman Katrina Ponce Enrile to explain why the Zobel bank allowed the strange alliance of Mike Arroyo cousin Benito Araneta, Malacañang nominee Enrique Locsin, and, at that time, Brother Eddie Villanueva lawyer Luis Lokin to withdraw hundreds of millions of disputed government-and-corporate funds from a BPI branch in mainly “pay to cash” checks.

What is even more puzzling, according to Ponce Enrile, is that on the same day that an injunction was served on BPI, the bank even allowed P10 million be cashed by socialite Concepcion “Tata” Poblador and, worse, continued to empty the Philcomsat Holdings account even after two months that the injunction had been served.

The surreptitious withdrawals came to light after the Ponce Enrile group came upon a treasure trove of canceled checks and accounting ledgers that also implicated sitting officials of the Presidential Commission on Good Government.