Too diligent or just dumb?

It has been about five years since the hapless victims of a preneed company filed complaints for large-scale or syndicated estafa with the Department of Justice. Those charges, if filed in court, would be non-bailable—meaning the corporate officials and their gofers responsible for the loss, manipulation, diversion or misappropriation of the trust funds would be yanked out of their cozy homes and dumped into our putrid jails pending trial in our courts.  If found guilty, they would rot there and their assets auctioned off to settle their financial obligations to the victims. That is justice.  None of their scions should find the gall to inherit, flaunt and enjoy such filthy lucre.

To date, the victims are still being victimized by too much red tape at the DOJ.  It’s hard to say whether the government investigators are being too diligent or just dumb!  Men of goodwill tend to give them the benefit of the doubt: They are just being too careful and don’t want to be rushed into filing non-bailable indictments against presumably respectable businessmen who are still around showing off their mansions and limos and hopping from one high-rise building to another in choppers! But the official excuse given is the sheer magnitude of the alleged scam.  There are tens of thousands of victims and volumes upon volumes of documents to examine.

We say, B.S.!

Transactions like the ones under investigation usually involve pro-forma documents—meaning, uniform and exactly the same contracts, varying only in names of clients and amounts/terms of coverage. How hard could it be for the investigators to come up with the idea that a mere sampling of those contracts should suffice? They should only be leafing through a handful of representative documents.  The fraudulent scheme used to siphon off the funds is the same. That should take no more than a few months to determine, that is, if they really put their hearts and souls into the “preliminary investigation.” To go over each and every document submitted to them just to establish “probable cause” would be the height of boondoggling!  No wonder five years was not enough!

—STEPHEN L. MONSANTO,

Monsanto Law Office,

Loyola Heights, Quezon City,

[email protected]