“For the wicked boasts of his heart’s desire, And the greedy man curses and spurns the Lord.” (Psalms 10:3)
In 1973, Robert Redford and Paul Newman teamed up in a big-time Confidence Classic, the crime/heist movie The Sting. This movie enjoyed extreme popularity worldwide, ran away with 12 Oscars, and netted $159.6 million at the box office.
The Sting, otherwise slang in the 1930s for an earth-shaking swindle, takes on several forms.
In the 1970s during the Martial Law era of the Marcos dictatorship, the popular Sting scheme was to use the victim’s own money to fund the swindler’s schemes.
This Sting became exposed by the Presidential Commission on Good Government, and subsequently, nullified by the Supreme Court as resorting to “behest loans”.
The scheme went this way, by the mere filling up of a slip of paper containing the authority of the Dictator’s signature, Philippine government banks gave out uncollateralized loans in staggering amounts to favored cronies, i. e. golfing buddies, relatives, political allies and business associates.
Thus, went the fortunes of crony businesses like Trader’s Royal Bank, CDCP Mining, National Sugar Trading Corp., Rustan’s, Delta Motor Corp., and the Herdis Group of Companies, among others.
And who played the poor victims in these swindles of national proportion? Originally, the taxpayers for having their tax money diverted to other purposes; but eventually, the whole Filipino people who were swindled of the proper use of government money for their collective benefit.
As a consequence, the Philippine economy took a dive, and poverty became the grim reality in the slums, and the rural countryside.
Economic experts estimated that the Filipino people lost anywhere from $10 to 26 billion from the behest loans!
After the EDSA Revolution, and the period of economic and political reconstruction under President Cory, the discovery of the scandalous behest loans was considered the greatest injustice ever to the Filipino people.
Fast forward to the year of the pandemic in 2021.
Cronyism is alive and well. The actors, President Duterte and his intimate Davaweño friend, Dennis Ang Uy of Phoenix Petroleum, Dito Telecommunications Inc., and the Udenna Corp., Uy’s multinational holding company.
Unlike the Marcos model, behest loans are not so obvious here. The crony connections, however, still translate into “favored business opportunity status”.
Consider the widely-scrutinized Pharmally scandal, and the ignominous connection of Duterte crony Michael Yang to the Pharmally modus operandi. In the Pharmally sting, the under-capitalized company, at P625,000, was awarded an P8 billion contract!
Pharmally raised quite a few eyebrows for the glaring irregularities in the Robert Redford Sting.
But wait! There’s a Sting even bigger! A swindle so monumental it could make it to the Guinness World Records.
On Oct. 18, certain “Concerned Citizens” filed a criminal complaint against Energy Sec. Alfonso Cusi and businessman Dennis Uy. The complaint centers on Uy’s acquisition of a Chevron subsidiary with a 45 percent stake in the Malampaya gas field.
Malampaya is the only oil and gas company in the Philippines, which supplies 40 percent of the Luzon power grid.
Complainants assert that the government ‘conspired’ to unduly favor Dennis Uy in acquiring the share of a Chevron subsidiary which holds 45 percent of the Malampaya gas-to-power project.
This buy-out was called a ‘midnight deal’ by the Senate Committee on Energy.
Unlike the behest loan Sting, Rod Redford and Paul Newman invented a new version of the shell game where the victim is made to choose from among three cups to identify which cup holds the shell. If the victim fails to identify the right cup, he loses. Of course, the victim always loses because by slight of hand, the swindler removes the shell before he starts shuffling the cups around.
In the Malampaya Sting, UC Malampaya, the new company created by Dennis Uy was awarded the Chevron stake sometime after the parties started negotiations in April 2019.
Note here three large frauds on the Filipino people. First, UC Malampaya was negotiating with Chevron, without the knowledge of the Philippine government through its Department of Energy. Under the joint venture among the Philippines, Chevron, and Shell, the government had a ‘right of first refusal’ to its counterpart venturer’s interest. Note also that the 45 percent share of Chevron is worth P138 billion. So money that should have pertained to the Filipino people is going to crony Uy instead.
Second, UC Malampaya was formally organized only in September 2019, or five months after it negotiated the acquisition with Chevron. In other words, Uy used a non-entity or non-existent corporation to close the deal with Chevron. Parenthetically, UC Malampaya was incorporated with a capitalization of only $100.
Shades of Pharmally, this is more shamelessly-greedy than anything ever imagined or tried in human history! We have the appropriate term for it: garapalan.
Third, the acquisition agreement credited UC Malampaya with $170 million of what Chevron expected to receive from the Philippines for its last two years of the joint venture. The agreement set the consideration to be paid by UC Malampaya at $565 million. Consequently, UC Malampaya made the Philippine government pay about a third of the consideration for its 45 percent rights to Malampaya. This is the ultimate Sting: “Niluluto ang Pilipinas sa sariling mantika!”
“Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?” (Matthew 23:32-33)
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