Estafa case vs Meralco execs dismissed

The Office of the City Prosecutor of Quezon City dismissed the case for large scale estafa filed by lawyer Oliver Lozano against the Meralco Board of Directors and Officers.

In its decision the Office of the City Prosecutor of Quezon City said the "acts complained of do not constitute a felony."

Assistant City Prosecutor Eligio Lofranco, in a resolution dated March 26, 2004, said that "upon careful scrutiny and evaluation of the evidence, affidavits and documents submitted by the parties, the charge of estafa against the respondents should be dismissed."

In his complaint-affidavit dated Feb. 17, 1998, Lozano charged the Meralco Board of Directors and Officers of large scale estafa. Lozano’s suit was based on his assumption of alleged "overcharging" of bills as well as the alleged fraudulent and deceitful representations of Meralco in the application before the then Energy Regulatory Board for increase of rates by "including corporate tax as part of its operational expense."

However, the Assistant City Prosecutor said that the "allegations that respondents "overcharged consumers" fraudulently and that they made "deceitful representations" in including taxes as part of corporate operating expenses in their application for rate increase are mere self-serving assertions and do not suffice."

"Aside from these assertions, no clear and categorical evidence was submitted to show how the purported deceit or fraud was committed by the respondents," Lofranco said.

"The evidence submitted by the complainant leaves much to be desired. There is nothing therein which clearly establishes the alleged acts of fraud, either by abuse of confidence or by means of deceit, which will constitute estafa," he added.

Meralco vice president for corporate communication Elpi Cuna said that Meralco welcomes the city prosecutor’s resolution, stressing that there really was no overcharging on the part of Meralco.

"What our critics misleadingly described as overcharges were really a rollback of the increase on distribution charges authorized by the then Energy Regulatory Board in 1994. In 1998 the ERB, upon COA’s recommendation, decided to ‘reverse itself’ effectively changing the rules of the game by changing the way income taxes are treated in determining the return on rate base (RORB)," Cuna said.