inquirer.net
BAGUIO CITY – Lawyers attending a Supreme Court-mandated legal seminar here took to task the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its alleged failure to act on the proliferation of corporations suspected to be dummies of Koreans.
The lawyers said there is a growing public clamor for the investigation of corporations formed by local incorporators who actually fronted for enterprising Korean businessmen.
This is in violation of the anti-dummy law and the constitutional prohibition on the ownership of lands by foreigners, they said.
The lawyers, who attended the mandatory continuing legal education (MCLE) at Hotel Supreme here, tagged the problem as “the creeping Koreanization of the Philippines.”
But the SEC told the Inquirer that the lawyers were barking up the wrong tree since the power to prosecute dummy corporations belonged to the Department of Justice.
“The DOJ has jurisdiction over violations of the anti-dummy law since they are classified as criminal offenses,” lawyer Annie Tesoro, SEC director for the Cordillera, Ilocos and Cagayan regions, said.
What the SEC can do, she said, is to check and monitor if registered corporations complied with their articles of incorporation.
“We can file administrative cases against erring corporations en route to the cancellation of their registration,” she said.
She said the SEC has limited powers and thus, a criminal case filed at the DOJ could hasten the SEC’s administrative proceedings against dummy corporations.
She said the SEC had heard of bogus corporations purportedly put up by Korean dummies but the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) should conduct the probe.
The Korean topic was an offshoot of former Dean Merlin Magallona’s discussion on the Spratly Agreement and the baseline bill in relation to the definition of the country’s national territory.
Magallona said the Korean issue was an “expansion that has become alarming.”
Baguio is one of the cities in the country that hosts a lot of Korean schools, restaurants and other businesses, which grew over the years, mainly due to the influx of Korean students who wanted to learn English here.
But lawyer Galo Reyes, a former law dean, said the SEC appeared to have been lax in its campaign to stop dummy corporations from buying land.
“From San Fabian, Pangasinan to Pagudpod, Ilocos Norte, these corporations had acquired beach lots, home lots and condominiums,” he said. “What is the SEC doing?” he asked.
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