Category: Cross Border

Manny Villar, JV Ejercito linked to offshore accounts

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SENATOR MANUEL ‘Manny’ B. Villar Jr. and Congressman Joseph Victor ‘JV’ G. Ejercito are from rival political coalitions. Villar played a lead role in the impeachment and eventual ouster from the presidency of Ejercito’s father Joseph Estrada.

In the May 2013 elections, Villar’s wife Cynthia is running for senator with President Benigno Aquino III’s Team PNoy while Ejercito is part of the senatorial slate of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) led by Vice President Jejomar ‘Jojo’ Binay.

But in one important respect, Villar, 63, and Ejercito, 43, are pretty much alike. Both businessmen-politicians own secret offshore corporations in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), a privacy and tax haven where a global elite of wealthy people like to keep their money away from the prying eyes of the authorities.

Villar is the beneficial owner of a BVI international business corporation called Awesome Dragon Holdings Limited. It was incorporated in the BVI on July 26, 2007 while he was president of the Senate. Villar served as Senate president from July 2006 to November 2008.

Ejercito is a director of a BVI company called Ice Bell Properties Limited formed on July 8, 1999, when his father was still president. In 2001, Ejercito became mayor of San Juan City, and in 2007, a freshman congressman form his father’s political bailiwick.

Check out full text and related documents, Part 2 of the PCIJ report, “Offshore and Politicians in the Philippines” here:

Part 2: Manny Villar, JV Ejercito linked to offshore accounts

Sidebar: Repentant, reticent, rude

In their separate written replies to the PCIJ, Villar and Ejercito differed yet again, however.

Villar admitted to being the “ultimate shareholder” of Awesome Dragon Holdings Limited but said it was a dormant company with a capital of just one US dollar. He said it was put in place in 2007 “as a ready corporate vehicle for any strategic multinational business opportunity that may become available.”

PCIJ checked with the BVI authorities and learned that contrary to Villar’s statement, Awesome Dragon Holdings remains active as of April 2, 2013.

Ejercito did not confirm or deny his directorship in Ice Bell Properties Limited. Instead, he raised questions about the timing of this story, which, he said, “is highly suspicious considering the on-going electoral campaign of which I am one of the leading contenders among the UNA senatorial candidates.”

Ejercito wrote: “I have held high respect to (sic) the PCIJ as an institution. I hope that you will not allow yourself to fall in (sic) the manipulative efforts of desperate people in (sic) dirty politics.”

Both Villar and Ejercito did not report their links with their respective offshore companies in their annual Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALNs), copies of which were gathered by PCIJ.

The PCIJ secured copies of Villar’s SALNs from 1992, when he was first elected member of Congress, to 2011, the latest available, as well as Ejercito’s SALNs from 2001, when he began his political career as San Juan City mayor, to 2009, the year for which the latest copy is available.

As public officials, Villar and Ejercito are required by law to list all their assets, liabilities, business interests, and financial connections, including those located in other countries, in their annual SALN.

In his reply, Villar said Awesome Dragon Holdings Limited does not appear in his SALN because it is owned by Fine Properties Inc., which he has already enrolled in his SALN. “I do not own it – it is owned by Fine Properties Inc.,” he said.

Fine Properties does not appear as shareholder or officer of Awesome Dragon Hioldings, however.

Records maintained by Portcullis Trust Net Limited, the offshore servicing company that was instrumental in incorporating Awesome Dragon Holdings Limited in the BVI, listed Villar as “beneficial owner” in the data sheet of the offshore corporation.

His ties to the offshore company are also apparent from the due diligence documents submitted by UBS AG (Hong Kong) to Portcullis Trust Net. In a September 5, 2007 letter to Portcullis with the subject heading “Re: Manuel Bamba Villar (‘the Client’),” UBS AG (Hong Kong) certified that Villar was a client of good standing of the bank since 1999 and confirmed his residential address.

Attached to the letter was a certified true copy of an image of the main page of Villar’s passport with a handwritten note stating “Re: BVI Co – Awesome Dragon Holdings Limited.” It was signed by Linda Chew, UBS AG (Hong Kong) executive director at that time.

Ejercito’s net worth has grown steadily through the years – from P53.3 million in 2001, when he was only 32 years old, to a high of P64 million in 2009

While he disclosed a fairly detailed list of his business interests and financial connections in over two dozens of family-owned and publicly listed companies, he did not include Ice Bell Properties Limited.

In his reply to PCIJ, Ejercito did not squarely address the question why Ice Bell Properties Limited is not mentioned in his SALN. He merely said: “To the best of my knowledge, I have truthfully and accurately declared all my assets, liabilities, and net worth in my Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Networth (SALN) since 2001 when I became Mayor of San Juan and up to the present, that I am now a member of the House of Representatives.”

Like Villar, JV Ejercito’s name also appears in the documents – he is listed as the sole director of Ice Bell Properties Limited. Records show the same San Juan city residential address that Ejercito wrote in his 2001 SALN.

Ownership, however, is lodged in a single-bearer share, which means no record of ownership is maintained by the company. Rather, ownership rests with whoever is in possession of the bearer instrument at any given time.

Ejercito’s Ice Bell Properties was incorporated in the BVI in July 1999, a time when he was overseeing a business conglomerate of close to 30 companies, including almost a dozen founded by his mother Guia Gomez, one of Estrada’s wives who is now the re-electionist mayor of San Juan City.

PCIJ checked with BVI authorities and found that Ice Bell Properties remains active as of last Tuesday, April 2, 2013.

Though they may not breaking any laws per se, politicians and public officials with ties to secret offshore corporations are regarded rather dimly by advocates of good governance.

“The intention is to hide the transactions or hide their income so they made use of tax havens or places where there are no rules on transparency,” said Milwida Guevara, a former undersecretary at the Department of Finance and one of the founders of the Movement for Good Governance, a civil society organization.

“It’s hypocritical that they are sponsoring legislation that calls for faithful compliance with laws. At the same time, they are themselves trying to get away with it,” says Guevara. - PCIJ, April 2013

Unlocking secret offshore accounts: A 46-country investigative report

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OVER THE LAST 15 months, a network of investigative journalists from 46 countries — including the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism — had been hard at work verifying and validating data enrolled in 260 gigabytes of about 2.5 million files, including more than 2 million e-mails.

The subject matter of inquiry: 122,000 offshore companies or trusts, nearly 12,000 intermediaries (agents or “introducers”), and about 130,000 records on the people and agents who run, own, benefit from or hide behind offshore companies.”

The global investigative reporting project was led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that is based out of Washington DC. But rather than just rush to upload the documents online, ICIJ thought it best to partner with journalists and media agencies to check out and verify first.

ICIJ collaborated with reporters from The Guardian and the BBC in the U.K., Le Monde in France, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Germany, The Washington Post, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and 31 other media partners around the world.

In all, “86 journalists from 46 countries used high-tech data crunching and shoe-leather reporting to sift through emails, account ledgers, and other files covering nearly 30 years.”

After all, the file was more than massive — “more than 160 times larger in size as measured in gigabytes than the U.S. State Department cables leaked to and published by WikiLeaks in 2010.”

Read Part 1 of the PCIJ’s report on “Offshore and Politicians in the Philippines”:

- Ferdinand Marcos’s daughter tied to offshore account in the Caribbean

- What Imee disclosed and didn’t

Today, the massive outcome of the global investigation of offshore accounts goes public worldwide.

Excerpts from the ICIJ reports, “Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze,” follow:

“A cache of 2.5 million files has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and the mega-rich the world over.

“The secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists lay bare the names behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands, and other offshore hideaways.

“They include American doctors and dentists and middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots , Wall Street swindlers , Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers, and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran’s nuclear-development program.

“The leaked files provide facts and figures – cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individuals – that illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy and the well-connected to dodge taxes and fueling corruption and economic woes in rich and poor nations alike. The records detail the offshore holdings of people and companies in more than 170 countries and territories…

“The vast flow of offshore money – legal and illegal, personal and corporate – can roil economies and pit nations against each other. Europe’s continuing financial crisis has been fueled by a Greek fiscal disaster exacerbated by offshore tax cheating and by a banking meltdown in the tiny tax haven of Cyprus, where local banks’ assets have been inflated by waves of cash from Russia.

“Anti-corruption campaigners argue that offshore secrecy undermines law and order and forces average citizens to pay higher taxes to make up for revenues that vanish offshore. The Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative, a program of the World Bank and the United Nations, has estimated that cross-border flows of global proceeds of financial crimes total between $1 trillion and $1.6 trillion a year.

“ICIJ’s 15-month investigation found that, alongside perfectly legal transactions, the secrecy and lax oversight offered by the offshore world allows fraud, tax dodging and political corruption to thrive.

Offshore patrons identified in the documents include:

- Individuals and companies linked to Russia’s Magnitsky Affair, a tax fraud scandal that has strained U.S.-Russia relations and led to a ban on Americans adopting Russian orphans.

- A Venezuelan deal maker accused of using offshore entities to bankroll a U.S.-based Ponzi scheme and funneling millions of dollars in bribes to a Venezuelan government official.

- A corporate mogul who won billions of dollars in contracts amid Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s massive construction boom even as he served as a director of secrecy-shrouded offshore companies owned by the president’s daughters.

- Indonesian billionaires with ties to the late dictator Suharto, who enriched a circle of elites during his decades in power.

“The documents also provide possible new clues to crimes and money trails that have gone cold.

“After learning ICIJ had identified the eldest daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, as a beneficiary of a British Virgin Islands (BVI) trust, Philippine officials said they were eager to find out whether any assets in the trust are part of the estimated $5 billion her father amassed through corruption.

“Manotoc, a provincial governor in the Philippines, declined to answer a series of questions about the trust.”

Thai show cancelled over lese majeste law

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

THAILAND’S Public Broadcasting Service (TPBS) has cancelled a ground-breaking public affairs show discussing the sensitive issue of the Thai monarchy in a move that again sparked debates over the country’s lese majeste law.

Thailand is very sensitive to any discussion of the Thai monarchy, which is protected by Article 112 of the Thai Penal Code, also known as the lese majeste law. The law prohibits defamation of the King, and other members of the Thai monarchy.

A news bulletin released by the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) says TPBS has cancelled the final episode of the political talk show “Tob Jote Prathet Thai” or “Answering Thailand’s Questions” following protests over the show’s content. The SEAPA website says the five-part series was the first ever to discuss the issue of the Thai monarchy openly on Thai television.

The final episode, which was supposed to air March 15, featured a debate between scholars Somsak Jiamtheerasakul and Sulak Sivaraksa. It was not clear what positions the two scholars took on the Thai monarchy that generated so much controversy.

The SEAPA bulletin said that on the night of the episode’s airing, a group of protesters appeared in front of the TPBS studies demanding the cancellation of the show and threatening to “take the law into their own hands.” The studio’s executives said they had to cancel the show  ”for fear of sparking social conflict,” said the SEAPA bulletin.

But despite the cancellation of the episode, two separate investigations have been launched by Thai agencies.

The National Broadcasting and Television Commission (NBTC) is reviewing the rules on the prerogatives of TV stations to cancel shows.

More importantly, the Royal Thai Police is also investigating whether the TV series had violated Thailand’s lese majeste law.

“Police said that the show concerns a matter of national security, and warned that persons reposting remarks of the show’s panelist may also be breaching the law,” SEAPA said in its website. SEAPA also quoted a police investigator who said that they have already found content that violated the lese majeste law.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do men dominate the field of investigative reporting?

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

SHEILA S. CORONEL, founding executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) and currently director of the Tony Stabile Center for Investigative Reporting in Columbia University, struck a sensitive chord online in the proverbial battle of the sexes with a March 10 blog post titled: “Is investigative reporting dominated by men?”

“It’s true that more and more women are entering journalism now than ever before… In many countries, the journalism profession is being “feminized.” But women in top editorial positions are still a minority.  And certainly, while there are a number of high-profile women investigative reporters, their numbers do not overwhelm,” Coronel’s blog reads.

Coronel cited the Women’s Media Center report last month that in 2012, women comprise only 37 percent of the staff of newspapers and account for only about one-third of the supervisory jobs. She goes on to say that the ratio of women in leadership positions in U.S. newsrooms has remained unchanged at about 30 percent since 1999. This, despite the fact that a woman is now at the helm of the one of the enduring newspapers in the U.S.–The New York Times.

According to Coronel, “A quick look at the 100 or so nonprofit investigative reporting centers, funds and associations worldwide shows that the face of watchdog journalism is male.”

However, here in the Philippines, investigative reporting takes on a more feminine face, as Coronel points out the experience of Filipino women at the height of then-strongman Ferdinand Marcos’ imposition of Martial Law.

“Many of the male journalists at that time had sold their souls to Marcos and spent the evenings after work drowning their torments at the bar of the press club. They were hardly role models. The women, on the other hand, were irreverent and feisty. They played a cat-and-mouse game with the censors,” Coronel writes in her later blog post, “Ensuring a place for women.”

For more on the latest trends in investigative reporting and insights from Sheila Coronel, check out her blog at http://watchdog-watcher.com/.

Coronel’s blog site also offers tips on investigative reporting and a comprehensive collection of the investigative reporting network of resources. 

Myanmar parliament votes to investigate blogger

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THE HLUTTAW or Parliament of supposedly democratizing Myanmar recently voted to investigate a blogger for writing an article that allegedly “dishonored” the legislators.

The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), a network of independent media organizations in the region, in an alert report said that the lawmakers created a 17-member bicameral commission to identify and take action on the blogger.

The article focused on efforts by the lawmakers to “amend the Constitutional Tribunal Law, saying that such moves was intended to gain more control over the judiciary and was thus in breach of the 2008 Constitution,” SEAPA said.

The blogger who used the name Dr Sate Phwar wrote: “The very people who swore to safeguard the constitution are now violating it intentionally.”

Gayathry Venkiteswaran, SEAPA executive director, said the lawmakers’ move “sends a strong warning to the online community that government will not tolerate any criticism.”

The full text of the SEAPA report follows:

MYANMAR’s Hluttaw (Parliament) approved on 8 February a proposal to investigate a blogger for writing a critical article that “dishonored” the legislature.

A 17-member bicameral commission was formed to determine the identity and take action on a blogger who wrote under the pseudonym “Dr Sate Phwar”, who wrote a 17 January 2013 article entitled “Is the Hluttaw (Parliament) above the law?”.

The Hluttaw’s move stems from a 17 January proposal by lower house representative Dr Soe Yin of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) from Kamaryut Constituency accusing the writer of dishonoring the dignity of Parliament, its members and performance, which could mislead the public and the international community.

His motion was passed on the same day by a 347 to 157 vote in favor of the investigation, with 42 abstentions. A commission was formed to be headed by headed by U Mya Nyein, deputy speaker of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (Assembly of the Union, the bicameral parliament) and U Nanda Kyaw Swa, deputy speaker of the Pyithu Hluttaw (House of Representatives), and 15 other members from both houses. .

According to state-run Burmese language Kyaymon (The Mirror) newspaper, the Commission will investigate: whether the article defames the Parliament and its members; whether the facts contained can mislead the public; whether it violated the Electronic Transactions Law governing facsimile, email, internet, intranet and similar communication technologies; or whether Sate Phwar’s exercise of freedom of speech violates other laws related to national security, rule of law, peace and morality or if he was within his rights as a law abiding citizen.

The Commission is also given authority to give orders and consult with concerned government units to determine the identity of “Dr Sate Phwar”.

The article, which was published on Dr Sate Phwar’s blog Voice of Myanmar, criticizes recent attempts by the Parliament to amend the Constitutional Tribunal Law, saying that such moves was intended to gain more control over the judiciary and was thus in breach of the 2008 Constitution.

“The very people who swore to safeguard the constitution are now violating it intentionally,” Dr Sate Phwar wrote in the article.

He mocked the parliament by suggesting adding a new constitutional clause which says, “Any decision by the Parliament should be adopted no matter what the Constitution says.”

Later, an apology was posted on 20 January for the said article.

Some articles in the blog had been published by the Smart News Journal of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. However, the blogger’s identity is not widely known.

According to the Democratic Voice of Burma, the Parliament’s decision risks denting Burma’s progress on media freedom, noting that the decision comes within the same week that the government abolished a draconian law on public speeches, previously used to silence critics.

Members of local blogging community in Myanmar have said that the Parliament is “wasting its time” by focusing on such minor issues as this article.

They added that Dr Sate Phwar was acting within his right to freedom of expression, and should not be charged.

A prominent blogger, Nay Phone Latt, who also heads the Myanmar ICT for Development Organization (MIDO), further cautioned against the use of the Electronic Transactions Law, which continues to threaten the freedom of netizens in the country.

SEAPA executive director Gayathry Venkiteswaran expressed concern with the use of the power of the Parliament to go after someone who expressed his opinion online, saying the move “sends a strong warning to the online community that government will not tolerate any criticism.”