CLARK FIELD — This newspaper published last Thursday an 885-word treatise of Pitero M. Reig, who claimed to be the lawyer for Luis K. Lokin Jr., reacting to my brief 280-word item of last July 11 on the Philcomsat Holdings Corp.

Mr. Reig said that when I wrote about PHC, I was impelled by an intent other than that of a stockholder. He declared that I did not have shares since he did not see my name on his listing of PHC stockholders as of July 2009.

A check with the Securities and Exchange Commission will show that there has not been a stockholders’ list submitted to it since 2006.  It puzzles me how Mr. Reig came up with a more recent list that even the regulatory SEC did not have.

He had about a month to check since my column came out, but Mr. Reig seemed to have failed to discover that PHC is a publicly listed company with many beneficial stockholders whose shares are in their brokers’ names, aside from the registered and certificated stockholders.

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PHC SHARES: For Mr. Reig’s and our readers’ information, I own 1,000 PHC shares, evidenced by share certificate No. 0762 endorsed to me under a deed of sale dated Dec. 22, 2006.

I paid for those shares and, although I understand that their market price may now be below par because of past inside-job thievery, I value them.

I was told that Mr. Lokin, the client of Atty. Reig, held only 100 shares (compared to my 1,000!) and that those were only qualifying shares to put him on the board. I will not be surprised if, unlike me, he did not pay for them.

Btw, the PHC Corporate Secretary had sent me and other stockholders a notice to attend the annual stockholders’ meeting last May 28. In that ASM, a new set of board members was elected, in case Mr. Reig still does not know.

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CAREFUL!: So when I said in my July 11 Postscript that I was/am a PHC stockholder concerned about the looting of our company by thieves claiming links to the Presidential Commission on Good Government, I felt rank outsiders should not begrudge me my protestations.

Also, I maintain that President Noynoy Aquino should be careful not to be misled into appointing to the PCGG people of doubtful honesty and sinecure-seekers who are related to those accused of looting PHC and sequestered firms.

Alas, while PHC is not a sequestered firm, sticky PCGG fingers managed to reach it.

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HUGE LOSSES: The PCGG comptrollers in the Philcomsat Group of Companies were pulled out by the PCGG itself in recognition of the stockholdings of the government in the Philippine Overseas Telecommunications Corp., which owns Philcomsat (Philippine Communications Satellite Corp.)

During the Senate investigation on questioned Philcomsat Group transactions that were linked to Mr. Lokin and his associates, the Senate found that the PCGG comptrollers had been ineffective.

The PCGG comptroller testified in the Senate he was unaware that the “Lokin-Philip Brodett Group” allegedly took funds out of PHC to pay for hefty emoluments supposedly as directors and officers of POTC and Philcomsat.

A perusal of PHC’s audited financial statements from 2005 to 2007 shows gargantuan losses and write-offs of P475 million while their group controlled PHC.

And they want us stockholders to just watch quietly in the sidelines?

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LOKIN ROLE: Mr. Reig said that I mislead readers when I mention the name of Lokin with the issue of PCGG nominees sneaking into the PHC board and helping themselves to its treasury.

How can I not mention Lokin when he was in the center of the intra-corporate dispute? In late 2000, the then PCGG nominees Benito Araneta and Ronaldo Salonga were taken out of Philcomsat and replaced by new PCGG nominees headed by then PCGG Commissioner now PAGCOR President Jorge Sarmiento.

Just before the PHC annual stockholders’ meeting in 2001 where an election of new directors was to take place and the removal of Lokin, Araneta, Salonga, Brodett, etc., seemed imminent, Lokin filed a complaint for injunction and TRO against the meeting.

This, and the Araneta-Brodett-Lokin board’s refusal to call stockholders’ meetings, allowed them to remain in control of PHC and its treasury for the next seven years to the detriment of some 1,500 shareholders, including the government that is the biggest (beneficial) owner.

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WHOSE NOMINEE?: Mr. Reig claimed that Lokin was elected to the PHC board to represent the private sector. That is amusing since there is no private or public sector in the publicly-listed corporation.

Lokin claimed he was elected as nominee of Philcomsat. But Philcomsat has been controlled and managed by the Ponce Enrile/Bildner Group since 2000 and I doubt if they would nominate Lokin to represent them.

Mr. Reig also claimed that the Secretary’s Certificate supposedly issued by Lokin to guarantee a loan with then wobbly Bankwise to Benito Araneta was fabricated.

While this matter is best resolved by the courts, I cannot help wondering why in 2005, Bankwise granted a P32-million loan to Araneta if, per Mr. Reig, the notarized certificate of Lokin hypothecating such loan through PHC funds was “falsified.”

Mr. Reig claims that the Court of Appeals cleared Lokin when it dismissed a case “which was the basis for the charges of conflict of interest.”  However, despite Mr. Reig’s attempt to confuse the story, the fact remains that Lokin was suspended by the Supreme Court from the practice of law and, in another case, was found by the Court to be “lying through his teeth.”