Ongpin resigns from PhilWeb

On the heels of having been tagged by President Rodrigo Duterte as among the oligarchs embedded in government, businessman Roberto V. Ongpin resigned as the chairman and director of publicly-listed PhilWeb Corp.

"I hereby tender my resignation, with immediate effect as chairman and director of PhilWeb Corp. and all of its subsidiaries," Ongpin said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange.

Ongpin faces disqualification from serving as an officer or board member of any public company and ordered to pay P174 million in fines by the Securities and Exchange Commission for alleged insider trading.

Ongpin on Thursday called the ruling by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “erroneous and grossly unfair.”

“I thought that the persecution under the Aquino administration had ended but apparently, the remaining minions of the past administration are still determined to get me,” Ongpin said in a statement sent to reporters by his legal counsel Atty. Cliburn Anthony Orbe.

The SEC in an en banc decision on July 8 ordered Ongpin to pay P174 million in fines and to resign from any public company or publicly listed company where he is an officer or a member of the board of directors.

The decision modified an order by the SEC's Enforcement and Investor Protection Department that found appellant Ongpin liable for insider trading but meted a fine of only P17.4 million.

"Having just concluded a deal the previous day with Manuel V. Pangilinan, who expressed willingness to buy 550 million shares from him at P21 per share, on the morning of December 2, 2009, the appellant admitted that he purchased, through Golden Media Corp., an additional 45,964,500 Philex [shares] from the open market at the market price of P19.25 to P19.50 per share," according to the SEC decision on July 8.

Ongpin claimed that there was "... no evidence whatsoever” on insider trading against him as he was simply negotiating a price with Pangilinan.

“The jurisprudence is clear, there was no insider trading at all,” he said, noting that the penalties imposed on him by the SEC were “cruel and unusual punishment.”

“Moreover, the move of the SEC en banc to increase the recommended penalty by the EIPD to P174 million, 10 times more than that recommended by its own EIPD, is unconscionable and in fact, confiscatory and only emphasizes the clear bias of the SEC against Mr. Ongpin,” Orbe said.

“From the start of the Aquino administration, there had been a pattern of harassment of Mr. Ongpin with a total of six cases having been filed against him by various agencies of the government. But all of them had been either quashed or dismissed,” he said.

PhilWeb shares fell P5.23 or 36.88 percent to close at P8.95 on Thursday from P13.20 on Wednesday. — With Ted Cordero/Jon Viktor Cabuenas/VDS, GMA News