AN ALLEGED former employee of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and another complainant, who claims to be a lawyer, on Friday filed a plunder complaint against former President Benigno Aquino III before the Office of the Ombudsman based on a questionable bank document.
Rogelio Cantoria, who claims he worked at the central bank from 1976 to 1995, and lawyer Fernando Perito accused Aquino, Senator Leila de Lima, Senator Franklin Drilon, Bangko Central Governor Amado Tetangco Jr., former Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II, and former Finance secretary Cesar Purisima of transferring gold bars worth billions of dollars to Thailand’s Centennial Energy Company Ltd. in 2014.
They anchored their complaint on BSP Circular 49 Series of 2014 that allegedly authorized Centennial Energy Company Ltd. to produce and issue the “Limited States Dollars Currency” of $100 amounting to a total of $3 trillion.
The money would be used to finance “humanitarian projects and for Asean countries.”
The complainants attached a certification and the alleged BSP circular showing 3,500 metric tons of gold bars registered in the name of “Ferdinand E. Marcos” were taken out of the country and deposited in a foreign bank.
De Lima, Roxas, Tetangco, Drilon and Purisima allegedly affixed their signatures on the certification.
But a check with the official website of the BSP said there was no BSP Circular 49 issued in 2014.
All circulars issued by the BSP had three-digit numbers, while Cantoria and Perito’s piece of evidence only appeared on the Facebook pages of Kingdom Filipina Hacienda Sovereign Host Nation” and some news blogs.
Section 50 of Republic Act 7655, the supposed basis for authorizing Centennial Energy to produce and issue the US dollars, was spurious since that was a 1993 law raising the minimum pay of household helpers.
RA 7655 has only four sections and does not have 50 sections.
On the other hand, RA 7735, which supposedly provided for the use of the dollars for humanitarian projects and for Asean countries, was a 1994 law providing for the establishment of a national high school in Barangay Poblacion in Mawab, Davao, to be known as Lorenzo S. Sarmiento Sr. National High School.