MANILA, Philippines—Benjamin Pinpin—the mid-level lawyer at the Development Bank of the Philippines who committed suicide last August—was driven to depression after he received successive letters from the bank’s board of directors threatening imminent legal action for his role in a purportedly anomalous loan to businessman Roberto Ongpin.
According to his immediate superior at the bank, Pinpin was particularly distraught over the fact that he remained a subject of the second round of “show cause” letters issued to some 20 DBP officers and staff, despite his having cooperating with the new board and having complied fully with the first show cause letter sent to him in May.
“When the second show cause letter came, that’s when his troubles really started,” DBP’s legal chief Benilda Tejada told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in an interview.
The July 21, 2011, show cause letter asked some DBP officers and staff to submit “an explanation in writing and under oath why no disciplinary action should be taken against [them]” within five days from receiving the letter. “Failure to do so would amount to a waiver of your right to submit your comments or explanation, and the administrative investigation shall proceed and be decided without your comments or explanation,” it added.
“Why am I still involved in this? I have no power to influence anything here,” she quoted Pinpin as saying to her on the day he received the letter from the bank’s board.
Tejada reminded Pinpin that she and other senior officials of DBP were the ones being targeted by the new board’s probe, but this failed to reassure him.
In the weeks leading up to his suicide—and after he had executed his affidavit meant to supposedly cast doubt on the propriety of the transaction —the deterioration in Pinpin’s physical condition was evident, she noted.
“I asked him: ‘Benjie, why are you always absent?’ because I’m the one who approves his leave forms. ‘Why are you losing weight?’” to which Pinpin replied: “Two weeks na akong hindi nakakatulog (I have been losing sleep for two weeks now).”
Tejada—who had been working with Pinpin at DBP since 2004—described the lawyer as a “quiet, simple man” whose life was devoted to his family and his work.
“Wala ’yang barkada, at hindi ’yan umiinom (He has no group of buddies and he does not drink),” she said. “He lived a peaceful life. Trabaho at pamilya lang ang concerns niya (His only concerns were his job and family).”
She added that unlike grizzled trial lawyers, Pinpin was unaccustomed to the pressure that high-profile complaints brought.
“Ma’am, hindi ako makatulog (Ma’m, I can’t sleep),” she quoted the lawyer as saying. “My name will be affected. It will mean the loss of my job, the loss of benefits and incarceration.”
Tejada added that Pinpin was made even more distraught by what he learned during informal meetings of the so-called “DBP 20,” where it was discussed that the members of the group were being pressured to implicate former DBP president and CEO Reynaldo David.
The DBP 20, she said, brought together bank employees—from senior officials to minor staffers—who received show cause letters from the board.
The roster included even a staff member whose only role in the loan was to type the “trading sheet” for the loan, observers brought in to witness the transaction and bank traders, she said, adding that also being probed were staff members who attended meetings to “just to take down notes.”
At one point, Tejada said she had offered to help Pinpin if he wanted to see a doctor for his condition—help which the lawyer declined. He instead told her that he was busy poring over the “Manual of Regulations for Banks” (a multi-volume document of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) so they “would have a defense” against the board’s accusations.
During one meeting with the DBP 20, a member of the group revealed that the board would likely elevate the issue against David, Ongpin and other bank officers before the Office of the Ombudsman.
“It aggravated his depression,” Tejada said.
On the morning of August 2, 2011, six days after signing an affidavit implicating his superiors in the controversial loan—a document he himself cast doubt on in his suicide letters to his family—Pinpin hanged himself in motel room in Las Piñas City.