Crony Jaime Dichaves, who had wanted a piece of the First Pacific-PLDT action, learned some tricks from Jimenez. In September 1999, he advised Estrada to order SSS and GSIS to again throw money into Belle Corp. Belle, in which Dichaves is stockholder and director, was at that time asking Estrada for Pagcor’s franchise to operate jai alai. Estrada demanded a kickback for it, Jimenez swore. But Belle was short of cash, so Estrada just asked for shares of Belle stocks. Belle issued new shares and turned over 25 percent to Estrada. Estrada then ordered SSS president Carlos Arellano and GSIS general manager Federico Pascual to buy the 75 percent for P745 million and P1.103 billion, respectively, or a total of P1.848 billion. It was an overprice, Jimenez swore. Arellano and Pascual, too, swore that Estrada got a P190-million commission from it. Jimenez added that Estrada even borrowed P126 million from him while waiting for delivery of the SSS-GSIS kickback. He said Estrada never repaid him, although the President deposited the check under alias Jose Velarde in Equitable-PCIBank - See more at: philstar/opinion/101650/no-say-gsis-sss-appointments-gotcha-jarius-bondoc#sthash.rutO4y3x.vLantKG6.dpuf
Posted on: Tue, 08 Oct 2013 23:11:47 +0000
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