Peña’s lawyer Roger Reyes confirmed the chief executive’s plan to file the intervention after the elections in a press conference held over the weekend.
Reyes said that in response to the demand letters from Philippine National Bank for their crop loans during that time, Peña will file claims on Benedicto’s estate before the Regional Trial Court Branch 51 in Metro Manila, where the case is pending.
“A group of sugar producers especially the Montilla family has decided to take actions against the estate of Roberto S. Benedicto,” he said.
Reyes also urged other sugarcane planters in the province who are in the same situation as his client to do the same.
"Unless the sugar producers will take action to defend themselves, the PNB, which is now controlled by Lucio Tan, will eventually start foreclosing the sugar lands and other collateral for the crop loans,” he warned.
From 1972 to 1984, Reyes said an estimated P14 billion has been taken by the defunct National Sugar Trading Corp. (NASUTRA) from sugar producers through its single selling marketing scheme based on a research conducted by University of the Philippines’ School of Economics.
NASUTRA, then headed by Benedicto, was the buying marketing arm of the Philippine Sugar Commission (Philsucom) organized in 1977.
“What happened was no single centavo was returned to the sugar industry. That's why, until now, there are no new investments like putting up new sugar centrals,” he lamented.
He added that after Martial Law, sugar planters did not acquire new tractors because of uncertainties in the sugar industry in addition to the threats of Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
Reyes said Manny Lacson and Lopez Sugar Corp. were the only groups that filed intervention on the Benedicto estate proceedings with minimal claims.
These groups were able to get the records of the proceedings from the Supreme Court, he said.
Benedicto was among the business cronies of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos.
-Philippine News Agency
