Rebel Yanson faction seeks court help to boost hold on giant bus firm

Members of the Yanson clan who recently took over Bacolod City-based Vallacar Transit Inc. said over the weekend that they had initiated legal action against their youngest sibling, Leo Rey, to stop him from trying to retake control of the country’s largest bus liner group.

In a statement, the group of Roy, Emily, Celina and Ricardo Jr.—the siblings allied against Leo Rey, Ginnette and matriarch Olivia—said they had filed for a court injunction last week to stop their rival group from “disrupting company operations.”

“We had previously appealed to Leo Rey to desist from forcing employees to defy new management’s actions to the extent of directing them to go on strike or demean us through posters of sympathy for him and his group,” said the group, which installed themselves as the company’s new management after a boardroom coup on July 7.

The group said Leo Rey also “asked union officers to feign a strike by paying-off employees to do nothing, and pretend that a strike is taking place, when there is and continues to be no reason for doing so.”

“All these go against the very purpose our late father, Ricardo Yanson Sr., had in organizing a company that is efficient, properly managed under a competent corporate structure,” it said.

To this, Leo Rey’s group replied that the rival Yanson siblings were trying to turn the tables on the previous management by mimicking their public statements and legal moves.

“It boggles the mind on how Roy and his ilk can play the victim card well,” said the youngest Yanson, who had been running the Yanson Group of Bus Companies from 2007 until three Sundays ago.

“By filing an injunction case similar to mine, they confuse the public, except those who know the facts, to make it appear that I was the one disrupting our operations,” Leo Rey said.