Syjuco committed fatal legal error, says RFM lawye

Iloilo Rep. Augusto Syjuco may have committed a fatal legal blunder when he got the court to issue a temporary restraining order on the sale of Cosmos Bottling Corp.’s (Cosmos) assets such as land and equipment.

"RFM Corp. is selling its shares in Cosmos to San Miguel Corp. It is not Cosmos that is selling any of its assets to anyone, so there is no need for an injunction," RFM lawyer Gilberto Gallos of the ACCRA Law Offices told the court in last Monday’s hearing.

"The deal under consideration is the sale of RFM’s shares of stock in Cosmos to San Miguel," RFM spokesman Elmer Yanga clarified. He said RFM owns about 83.2 percent of the outstanding issued shares of Cosmos, and this is what San Miguel is interested to acquire.

Also in the hearing, Gallos told the Quezon City Regional Trial Court that Syjuco’s claims of unpaid tax liabilities, which is Syjuco’s main basis for filing the P400-million case against Cosmos, is "speculative."

"There is no assessment from the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) that Syjuco can show to support his claim of tax liabilities in the amount of P261 million," the lawyer said.

Yanga also said "all taxes directly arising from the transaction when Syjuco sold his companies to Cosmos, have been fully paid."

"We have the all necessary tax returns and receipts to show that the proper taxes have been paid. If Syjuco has other things in mind, he has to prove first that such tax liability exists, and has become due and payable before he can make any claims," Yanga said.

On the miscellaneous unpaid obligations in the amount of P146 million also being claimed by Syjuco, Gallos told the court that these are "bogus."

"The lawyer of Syjuco has admitted in a letter dated Feb. 14, 1997 that the amount due is only P13 million. Later, in a reconciliation report dated March 6, 1997 and signed by the president of Syjuco’s company and an SGV (Sycip, Gorres & Velayo) auditor, it was verified that Cosmos had even made an overpayment of P9 million to Syjuco," the lawyer said.

Yanga said "it is possible the numbers are again being padded by Syjuco in order to enlarge his claims now, as he had done before based on our experience with him."