When the house of cards fall… the finger-pointing begins.
Investment fund manager says she was victim, too
DESPITE investors’ claims that it was she who enticed them to invest their money in the foreign exchange trading firm Performance Investment Products Corp. (PIPC), Cristina Gonzales-Tuason, the company’s general manager, insisted Monday that she, too, was a victim of the investment scam.
Accompanied by her two lawyers, Mario Bautista and Gener Ballesteros, Tuason appeared at the National Bureau of Investigation anti-organized crime division (AOCD) at 10 a.m. Monday. She, however, refused to answer questions from the media.
“She’s definitely a victim,” Bautista told reporters, adding that his client went to the NBI in response to the subpoena issued by the bureau last Tuesday.
“We wish we knew,” he said when asked if Tuason knew where Michael Liew, the Singaporean owner of PIPC who allegedly disappeared with at least $250 million of investor money, was.
“We were the ones who asked the NBI to look for Liew. We’re looking for Mr. Liew. He just disappeared with all the money,” Bautista said.
Oscar Embido, assistant regional director and chief of the NBI-AOCD, said Tuason inquired about the nature of the complaints filed against her by at least five investors.
Four of the five investors filed their complaints Monday. The fifth, a businessman in his 30s, lodged his charges last week.
“Ms Tuason asked for five days to file a counter-affidavit to refute whatever charges the complainants had filed against her,” Embido said, adding that he expected her to personally appear at the NBI again on Friday morning.
“She has to come because she has to give [her statement] under oath,” he said.
The NBI, meanwhile, has set up a public assistance center at a hotel to entice investors to come out in private and cooperate in the probe.
The center is in the Azure function room on the 8th floor of The Pearl Manila Hotel which is across from the NBI headquarters on Taft Avenue, Manila. Tel. Nos. are +63 2 4000088, local 3010 and 3011, and +63 927 4845883.
The center will receive complainants round-the-clock Monday to Friday, the NBI said.
“We wanted to provide a private space for investors who might want to but are hesitant to come out and speak up regarding their PIPC investments,” said lawyer Ruel Lasala, head of the NBI National Capital Region.
Lasala was quick to add, however, that the creation of an assistance center in a hotel was not meant to give the investors special treatment.
“Most of them were mum about the issue so we thought of a friendly approach. This is our way of encouraging them to cooperate with us,” he said. “Besides, they’re complainants, not suspects.”
Reynaldo Esmeralda, NBI deputy director for regional operations services, said the center’s expenses will come from the bureau’s intelligence fund.
At the Senate, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile wants the chamber to investigate PIPC in aid of legislation “to determine the machinations used by PIPC to perpetrate its scheme and circumvent the law.”
In a resolution he filed Monday, Enrile said PIPC had illegally engaged in foreign exchange trading even as it was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the last nine years as a “research company.”
Enrile said the Senate would look into the “alleged illegal investment syndicate involving the PIPC which has caused losses of millions of dollars in foreign exchange trade, with the end in view of recommending remedial measures to protect the investing public.”
With a report from Dona Z. Pazzibugan
