Yasay says his main job at Banco Filipino was not loan reporting

Former Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay has denied any liability over the failure of Banco Filipino Savings & Mortgage Bank to report P350 million in loans it extended to Tierrasud Inc. between 2001 to 2009 as alleged by state prosecutors.

As the bank’s director and chief legal counsel, Yasay said it was not within the purview of his position to do such report.

“I am just the director … I was tasked and hired to sit down with high officials of the BSP to negotiate with them as directed by SC in pursuing the rehabilitation plan,” Yasay said in an interview with ANC, referring to Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the Supreme Court.

Last week he was arrested by the Manila Police for violating general banking laws and The New Central Bank Act. Together with five other officials of Banco Filipino, Yasay was allegedly supposed to report the loan of Tierrasud.

“I was just pursuing the interest of the bank on the matter. I was not at all involved in the operations,” Yasay noted.

However, he defended Banco Filipino’s decision not to report the loan.

“There is no point of reporting if Banco Filipino, in this instance, is the most regulated bank in the country or was the most regulated bank in the country. There was assigned, directly from the Monetary Board, since Day 1 since it reopened, a controller, a team of controller, who managed the bank, from 1994 to 2010 when the bank was closed,” Yasay said.

“Everything was monitored by the controller. They attended every management meeting where this was taken up, every executive committee meeting that this was taken up, every board meeting that this taken up,” he added.

Yasay served as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during the short-lived Estrada administration from 1998 to 2000.

He was named as Foreign Affairs secretary by President Rodrigo Duterte in May 2016, but his appointment was rejected by the Commission on Appointments after it was revealed in CA hearings that Yasay was once an American citizen even though he told the CA panel that he never became a US citizen. —Llanesca Panti/VDS, GMA News