In a meeting on July 9, 2012 at the residence of Czech Ambassador to Manila Josef Rychtar, wherein De Vera and a businessman named Manolo Maralit, said to be a consultant of the Czech Embassy, were also present, it was De Vera who proposed that Inekon pay $30 million to an “unknown entity.” De Vera and Maralit are said to be close to some relatives of the President, principally his first cousin Jorge Aquino-Lichauco (son of Ninoy Aquino’s sister Maur), who is said to have drafted the “sample terms” for the Light Rail Vehicles (LRV) negotiation’s terms of reference (TOR). There’s opinion that Lichauco, who’s suspected to have been the “unknown entity” that De Vera and Maralit were allegedly reporting to that night at the ambassador’s residence, had submitted a sample TOR so stringent that it would have excluded all other bidders. Inekon Chief Husek claimed that he protested this demand for a $30 million cough-up. XXX The conclusion Manalo arrived at in his Tribune article was that Al Vitangcol, who is a novato in government circles, having been recruited by former DOTC Secretary Mar Roxas on January 2, 2012 from the ranks of IT practitioners, is being made the fall guy by a circle close to the President. The implication in Manalo’s piece is that it’s a sort of a second-generation Kamag-anak, Inc. attempting to corner the LRV enchancement program of the DOTC. When this Inekon issue first broke out in media, the names of presidential sister Ballsy Aquino-Cruz and husband Eldon Cruz came out as allegedly brokering for the Inekon Group, which is represented here by Yorgos Psinakis (nephew of the late Steve Psinakis, a close friend of the Aquino family from way back, whose wife, Precy, is connected with the family that owns ABS-CBN). This suspicion was fueled by the fact that the Cruzes had travelled to Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, in 2011, with some businessmen about the time that the Czech company began making overtures to supply the Philippines with more MRT trains. But the Cruzes explained that like many other Filipinos they were just there to make a pilgrimage to the Sto. Nino de Praga.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 14:40:56 +0000
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