Senators Mar Roxas, Pong Biazon and Juan Ponce-Enrile did a great job yesterday during the hearing on the Legacy Bank and pre-need fund scams.

Enrile was brilliant when he suggested that the SEC and the BSP go after all of Celso delos Angeles Jr.’s properties, especially that 200 million peso house he tried to sell to one of the senator’s friends.

Collusion was established between some officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Legacy owner Celso delos Angeles Jr. when two (2) former Legacy executives implicated SEC Commissioner Martinez as the official who received a house and lot and one Ford Expedition from Boy Sese.

One Legacy official also tagged Paranaque Representative Ed Zialcita who reportedly receives 100,000 pesos per month as “consultancy fees” from De Los Angeles Jr. The monies given to Zialcita already amounted to 1.8 million pesos.

It was also established that Zialcita and SEC Commissioner Martinez are second cousins. This implies that Zialcita probably also benefitted from the “fruit of the poisonous” Legacy tree.

What has not been mentioned so far are the so-called ties of Delos Angeles to Speaker Prospero Nograles who admitted having a 17 million peso interest in the Legacy banks. Nograles said that he was a silent investor in Boy Sese’s banks. If this is true, Nograles has one of the biggest investments in the scam. He should be invited for questioning too.

Former senator Robert Jaworski’s name was also mentioned, along with Vice President Noli de Castro’s. De Castro, as reports and records would show, knew Mr. Delos Angeles Jr. since his broadcaster days over at ABS-CBN. When Boy Sese was operating his illegal numbers game in Marikina and Rizal, de Castro was allegedly seen having lunch and dinners with him.

The question in everybody’s mind is—how deep will this probe go? Would it go up to De Castro even? Or, it will just settle with Zialcita, who defended himself by alleging that he’s being made a foil to protect the interests of other government officials implicated in this monumental scam.

Vice President Noli de Castro already said his piece and nothing was ever mentioned in the newspapers about his complicity behind the Legacy scam.

Remember that Noli de Castro heads the housing department of the government. How many housing units did the Legacy banks tried to finance using Legacy pre-need funds? That should be investigated as well.

Another one, there has been no whimper on the probe of other pre-need firms which are now in the brink of collapse. Same goes to the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (PDIC) who continues to fund that 14 billion pesos which Delos Angeles squandered and led to the collapse of the Legacy banks. PDIC should stop paying up and conclude their investigations on the authenticity of the deposits before they go further.

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