BILLIONAIRE and 1-Pacman party-list Rep. Michael Romero has been barred by a Quezon City Regional Trial Court from claiming ownership of his family-owned Harbour Centre Port Terminal Inc. He or his party was not available for comment.
The order marked a major setback in Romero’s protracted legal battle with his father, construction magnate Reghis Romero II, who sued his estranged son for allegedly falsifying ownership of the port facility.
Branch 222 Presiding Judge Edgar Santos ordered Romero and his affiliates, as well as their agents, employees and successors-in-interest to stop acting on behalf of HCPTI as shareholder or member of the board of directors of the Manila North Harbor Port Inc.
The order exposes some possible challenges in the ownership of Manila North Harbor Port Inc., which has been taken over by conglomerate San Miguel Corp.
SMC president and chief operating officer Ramon Ang said the group now controls a 78.33-percent interest in the contested port terminal firm.
Before the transaction, MNHPI was 65 percent owned by HCPTI and 35 percent by San Miguel-owned Petron Corp. SMC eventually acquired an additional 43.44-percent stake.
Santos, in his Jan. 5 order, also prohibited Romero and other respondents in the case from exercising any rights as the board of HCPTI and from representing themselves as the duly authorized representatives, with the power to act for and on behalf of Harbour Terminal, including any sale, transfer or disposition of its assets and shares.
They were ordered to stop representing themselves as stockholders of Harbour Terminal.
The court said it was inclined to believe that the 2011 deeds of assignments, which were used by the younger Romero’s camp to represent themselves as the rightful majority shareholders of Harbour Terminal, were forged and could not be valid bases for them to represent themselves as the majority shareholders of the company.
“Plaintiffs R-II Builders Inc. and R-II Holdings Inc. should, at this stage of the proceedings, be deemed as the majority holders of Harbour Terminal, whose rights would be greatly prejudiced if the defendants [Michael Romero et. al] would not be restrained from representing themselves as such pending the resolution of the main case,” the court ruling said.
The elder Romero secured last year a favorable ruling from the Court of Appeals, which declared as null a Pasig trial court order that banned the continuance of civil, criminal, and administrative cases that he filed in behalf of the port facility.
The appellate court said the ruling was issued with grave abuse of discretion as it unfairly relegated Romero “to be a mere spectator where he may no longer pursue his rights of ownership over HCPTI.”