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By Jomar Canlas, Reporter
The Supreme Court ordered a probe into a
complaint filed by Steel Corp. against a woman judge who posted a
“sexy” photo of herself on the Friendster website.
The High Court, through the Office of the Court
Administrator Zenaida Elepano, asked Batangas City Regional Trial
Court Judge Ma. Cecilia Austria to explain her side in 10 days on a
complaint filed by Antonio Lorenzana, Steel Corp. vice-president. He
is fighting Austria’s decision to rehabilitate the company.
The Manila Times tried calling Austria’s
office in Batangas several times but did not get through.
She is accused of arbitrarily deciding to reduce
Steel Corp.’s equity value to be used in the debt-to-equity
conversion that she adopted in the rehabilitation plan, and for
having done this without conducting a hearing to determine the
imminent danger of dissipation of business operations that could be
considered as a legal ground as required by law before the
appointment of a management committee.
Company executives are asking help from Chief
Justice Reynato Puno and Court of Appeals Presiding Justice Conrado
Vasquez for what Steel Corp. considered as “the injustice it
suffered” before a special commercial court in Batangas City.
Steel Corp. also asked the Supreme Court to
investigate the possibility of a rigged raffling of cases at the
Court of Appeals.
Lawyer Ferdinand Topacio, counsel for Steel
Corp., said he wonders how the four cases filed by the company at
the Court of Appeals “miraculously” ended up in the sala of only
one of the 52 associate justices—that of Sixto Marella.
“I believe there [are] enough circumstances to
reasonably assume that there is an anomaly,” Topacio said.
He asked the High Court and the Court of Appeals
leaderships “to investigate the circumstances surrounding our
cases in order to clear the air of any cloud of doubts that the
process had been manipulated in favor of a particular party
litigant.”
Steel Corp. elevated their case to the Court of
Appeals by filing a petition for a restraining order against the
implementation of a rehabilitation plan sought by one of the
company’s creditor banks, Banco de Oro-Equitable Philippine
Commercial and Industrial Bank (BDO-EPCIB), which originated from
the sala of Judge Austria.
Marella said he has no control over the raffling
of cases and over other justices who had inhibited themselves and
unloaded the cases to his sala.
In a petition for review on certiorari, Steel
Corp. asked the Court of Appeals to junk the Batangas court’s
ruling that places the firm under rehabilitation. The executives
fear that the real intention is not to rehabilitate the firm, but to
allow another party to take over management.
Steel Corp.’s petition argues that the
Batangas court committed an error and violated the firm’s right to
due process in granting creditor bank’s petition, despite the fact
that the lower court itself is not experienced in corporate
rehabilitation.
--With Johanna Sampan
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