BSP Filed Criminal Charges Against Top Banco Filipino Officials

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The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) today filed with the Department of Justice several criminal charges against Directors and Officers of Banco Filipino Savings and Mortgage Bank for falsification, grant of illegal loans, and major violations of banking laws, rules and regulations. The BSP charged the following officials of Banco Filipino Chairman and President Teodoro O. Arcenas, Jr.; Vice Chairman Albert C. Aguirre; Executive Vice President Maxy S. Abad; Directors Perfecto R. Yasay, Jr., Orlando O. Samson, Adelaida C. Adduru-Bowman, Francisco A. Rivera and Ramon E. Montano; and Executive Vice President Catherine Aguirre-Hernandez and BF SVP Roberta Afable.   

The BSP said these officers of Banco Filipino repeatedly violated several laws on account of the following: Willful refusal to stop the conduct of unsafe, hazardous and unsound banking practices; Falsification and issuance of false statements to hide the true financial condition of the bank; Willful refusal to file audited financial statements; Willful refusal to report DOSRI (directors, officers, stockholders and other related interest) loans; Twenty six counts of willful refusal to comply with numerous banking laws and BSP directives, including the appointment of two independent directors as well as the holding of regular monthly meetings of its Board of Directors. Banco Filipino also refused to submit a plan of reduction of management consultants which reached as much as P162 Million in one year.

The BSP said Banco Filipino engaged in hazardous lending and lax collection policies and practices. Among others, Banco Filipino approved an excessive number of weak and self-serving loans to its directors, officers, stockholders and related interests (DOSRI loans), equivalent to P2.192 billion or 53.5% of total loans.

Banco Filipino also allowed an excessive volume of past due/non-performing loans to remain uncollected: these accounted for 90.9% of its total loan portfolio.     

The BSP said Banco Filipino manipulated, falsified, and window-dressed its accounting records to conceal its true financial conditions to the great prejudice of its depositors, creditors, investors and stockholders.

Banco Filipino had 177,652 depositors, about 53% of whom had deposits of P5,000.00 and below.