Romblon-based rural bank chief convicted for cooking firm’s books

MANILA, Philippines — The chief of a shuttered Romblon-based financial institution was recently convicted of three counts of falsifying public documents after submitting reports to the central bank that artificially inflated the rural bank‘s deposit accounts.

In a statement, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said that Angeles Robis, chair and president of the closed Rural Bank of Cajidiocan (Romblon) Inc., was found guilty by Judge Ma. Christina de Pio Lim of Branch 24 of the Metropolitan Trial Court of Manila in a decision promulgated last month.

He was sentenced to suffer imprisonment of six months up to two years, four months and one day. The court also ordered the former rural bank executive to pay a fine of P5,000 for each count.

The conviction stemmed from a criminal complaint filed in 2008 by BSP’s Office of Special Investigation against Robis for submitting to BSP three verified quarterly consolidated statements of condition for 2006 that reflected nonexistent deposits in the bank’s cash-in-bank account.

In 2003, in an attempt to provide proof of the deposits, Robis presented to BSP falsified certificates of time deposit totaling P45.3 million, supposedly issued by Land Bank of the Philippines’ United Nations Avenue Branch in Manila.

However, central bank’s verification showed that the time deposit accounts only had a balance of P285,000.

It was established during the trial that the nonexistent deposits, which were reported in the cash-in-bank account upon his instructions, represented funds collected for the rural bank by a finance company owned and controlled by Robis and his family.

The funds – which included loan payments as well as remittances and fees that were supposed to have been received by the Rural Bank of Cajidiocan – were only partially transmitted by his finance company to the rural bank, or sometimes not at all.

This resulted in the eventual depletion of the bank’s deposits which, in turn, led to its inability to service the withdrawals of its depositors. Consequently, the central bank’s Monetary Board ordered the closure of the rural bank and placed it under the receivership of the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation in February 2007.

In April 2018, Branch 41 of the Regional Trial Court of Manila also sentenced Robis to suffer imprisonment for a maximum period of 10 years for the same falsified financial statement that declared nonexistent deposit accounts.