Ongpin: Raps erroneous, persecution continues

Businessman Roberto V. Ongpin has decried a recent insider trading charge filed against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), calling it as “erroneous” and “grossly unfair.”

“I thought that the persecution under the Aquino administration had ended but, apparently, the remaining minions of the past administration are still determined to get me,” Ongpin said in a press statement on Sunday.

The SEC recently slapped Ongpin with a P174-million fine for allegedly using insider information to profit from the trading in Philex Mining shares in 2009. This is the first and only case of insider trading so far decided by the SEC en banc under the Securities and Regulation Code.

The Securities Regulation Code prohibits an insider from buying or selling a security of the issuer, while in possession of material information with respect to the issuer or the security that is not generally available to the public.

Apart from the monetary penalty, the SEC also disqualified Ongpin from holding any post as officer or member of the board of directors of any issuer corporation.

Ongpin’s legal counsel has elevated the case to the Court of Appeals.

The businessman said that what the SEC was trying to pin him down for pertained to the same case that was filed at the Sandiganbayan by the Ombudsman several years ago—and which was quashed twice by the Sandiganbayan for lack of probable cause.

The case did not even go to trial, Ongpin said.

The Ombudsman had alleged the state-controlled Development Bank of the Philippines had suffered from a behest loan extended by former bank officials to Ongpin.  The businessman said the truth that the DBP benefited by P1.4 billion from the deal with him.

Ongpin pointed out the case was shifted by the SEC to an insider trading case despite the lack of evidence.

At the time he bought additional shares in Philex, Ongpin said he was only negotiating a price with First Pacific chief executive Manny Pangilinan. It was a straightforward commercial transaction and was never based on insider information, he said.

“The jurisprudence is clear— there was no insider trading at all,” Ongpin said.

At the time of the questioned trading transactions, Ongpin was a director and vice chair of Philex Mining.

More significantly, Ongpin said the case was filed almost a full year after the two-year deadline imposed by the Securities and Regulations Code.  “Clearly, the case had prescribed,” Ongpin said.

He added that the penalties imposed on him by the SEC were “cruel and unusual punishment” requiring him to resign from all listed companies and effectively forcing him to go out of business and terminate his business career.

Moreover, Ongpin said, the move of the SEC en banc to increase the recommended penalty to P174 million—10 times more than that recommended by the SEC’s own  enforcement and investor protection department—was “unconscionable and in fact, confiscatory, and only emphasized the clear bias of the SEC.”