posted July 22, 2016 at
11:55 pm by Jenniffer B. Austria [ thestandard.com.ph ]
Former trade minister and
businessman Roberto Ongpin plans to appeal the Securities and Exchange
Commission’s decision to disqualify him from the board of any publicly listed
company and collect a fine of P174 million on allegations of insider trading
involving shares of Philex Mining Corp.
“Mr. Ongpin intends to
appeal this case, for total lack of merit, to the Court of Appeals,” Ongpin’s
legal counsel said in an e-mail message, when sought for comment about the SEC
decision.
Ongpin’s legal counsel
said the Philex Mining case was originally filed at anti-graft court
Sandiganbayan by the Ombudsman as a behest loan case and was twice quashed by
Sandiganbayan for lack of evidence.
“This particular case now has been shifted by the SEC to an insider trading case, but in no way can this case be called insider trading. The jurisprudence is clear on that. The case had unquestionably prescribed as it was filed almost a year after the two-year deadline required in the Securities Regulations Code,” Ongpin’s legal counsel said.
Roberto Ongpin
The SEC en banc, in a
decision dated July 8, 2016, ordered the disqualification of Ongpin from the
board of any publicly listed company for allegedly committing insider trading
in the sale of Philex Mining shares in 2009.
The corporate regulator
also ordered Ongpin to pay a fine of P174 million, or P1 million each from
alleged 174 counts of insider trading, based on Section 54.1 of the Securities
regulation Code.
The amount was higher
than the P17.4-million fine recommended by SEC’s enforcement and investor protection
department.
With the en banc
decision, SEC ordered Ongpin to relinquish or resign from any or all positions
he was holding as officer, member of the board of directors, or any similar
functions in a public company or publicly listed company.
The 80-year-old Ongpin, a
former trade minister during the Marcos administration, currently sits as
chairman of two listed companies, including PhilWeb Corp. and Atok Big Wedge
Inc. He is the chairman of Alphaland Corp. and is in the board of Forum Energy
Plc.
The SEC investigation
showed that during the week of Nov. 24, 2009, businessman Manuel Pangilinan
representing the First Pacific Group and Ongpin entered into negotiations with
respect to the possible purchase by the First Pacific group of Philex shares from
the latter.
The parties settled on
the selling price of P21 per share on Dec. 1, 2009. In the morning of Dec. 2, 2009, Ongpin
through his Golden Media Corp. purchased additional 45,964,500 Philex shares
from the open market at P19.25 to P19.50
per share. The purchase involved 174 separate transactions.
The corporate regulator
claimed that Ongpin had gained non-public material information as a director
and as selling shareholder of Philex when he acquired additional shares in the
mining firm before Philex shares were sold to the First Pacific group.