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“PARTIAL REDEMPTION”
by Juan L. Mercado

Former Rep. Mark Cojuangco went “ballistic” on TV this week. The ex-Pangasinan legislator flared at criticism over a Supreme Court award of 16.2 million San Miguel Corporation shares to his father: tycoon Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco.

He said “My father had a right to those shares. Instead of being criticized he should be praised for setting up a replanting program and “etrochemical plants to add value to the coconut.”.

Mark denied the close association between Marcos and Cojuangco and insisted this had never been proven..

‘However Justice Conchita Carpio claimed in her dissenting opinion that Cojuangco’s SMC bonanaza were bought from levies Marcos’ dictatorship wrung from indigent coconut farmers. .

Since People Power I also banished the Cojuangcos to Hawaii Mark insisted this was the only time Marcos and his father met regularly.

Not so, wrote Justice Lourdes Sereno in her dissent on the SMC fracas.. Sapped by the martial law levy, coconut farmers “in effect financed expansion of the business empire of Eduardo Cojuangco. Ilicit acts were obscured by a corporate layering scheme.

Four sets of evidence, prove ”Cojuangco’s close association with Marcos and the “behest” nature of loans used to finance purchase of SMC stocks..

(1) Marcos appointed Cojuangco to head both Philippine Coconut Authority and United Coconut Planters Bank,. Through these positions, buttressed by a series of “tailored” executive issuances by Marcos, he employed a scheme of corporate layering and multi-level loan transactions to divert public funds.

(2) How? Cojunagco brokered terms of UCPB in his favor. Coco levy funds were deposited interest-free at UCPB, “which administered them as it pleased..”. As UCPB president, Cojunagcio wrung “substantial loans used to purchase the SMC shares, directly in his name or “indirectly through his dummy corporations….He used prima facie public funds (derived from the coco levy) in CIIF Oil Mills to snap up substantial amounts of SMC “ stocks

(3) Shell firms were whistled up “ for the sole reason of purchasing SMC shares.” These “fronts” parceled ” favorably obtained credit from UCPB to different entities.” There’would be no paper trail leading to “a single natural person who had control and ”There is no denying that plaintiff is a very close political and business associate of the former President, “ the Supreme Court said. “.

(4) Two blocks of Bulletin Publishing Corporation shares – 46,626 and 90,877 - in the name of Eduardo Cojuangco, were in fact “ill-gotten wealth” of the Marcoses, the Court ruled in Republic vs. Estate of Hans Menzi

Cojuangco also acted as “dummy” nominee or agent “of Ferdinand. Marcos and Imelda Romualdez Marcos in acquiring Manila Bulletin shares.

“Cojuangco does not, deny, nor is he ashamed of, his relationship with the late dictator. But he distances himself from Marcos’s greed… If. crony capitalism of Marcos dictatorship is slowly erased from public memory”, martial law revisionism will triumph in the future.

The future may yet present an “opportunity to revisit the ruling of this Court — and Philippine history may have a chance to be redeemed in part.”