Andy Bautista is correct: Mom dragged as borrower in a tax-haven loan deal
Comelec chairman Andres “Andy” Bautista is correct in his claim that his frail octogenarian mother has been unfairly dragged into his messy break-up with his trophy wife, Tisha.
The question that has so far remained unanswered: who is the dastardly character that had looped in Andy’s 87-year-old mother and even his equally frail father into this turbulence?
One particularly disturbing document has already surfaced: Andy’s mother purportedly signed in mid-August last year a $500,000, three-year loan, with she as the sole signatory for the borrower, Baumann Enterprises Limited of British Virgin Islands.
The purported lender, Mega Achieve, was supposed to be based in another tax haven, Anguila, but was represented in this transaction by a Hong Kong resident.
Instead of a swift, categorical denial, the Comelec chairman was reported to have answered ABS-CBN when asked by the network about the alleged loan document: “As I said before, let us settle these matters in court, not in the media.”
Before the reader gets swamped by denials, Andy and his Oklahoma-based brother, Dr. Martin Bautista, have so far acknowledged that:
• Half of the 25 Luzon Development Banks passbooks, containing about P200 million, are held in joint accounts by Andy, his father, and his mother. • Andy has received “referral fees” from at least one law firm for passing on A-1 clients.
In addition, the same law firm bought two condo units in a Shangri-La project from Andy, which explains the almost daily P500,00 cash transfers from BDO to his LDB account.
• Andy also admitted to having received unspecified cash flows from an investment scheme whose alleged brains, a classmate in Ateneo de Manila known as Joey Pery, has gone missing.
Incidentally, Pery’s name was printed on a payslip attached to a brown envelope, along with other brown envelopes said to still be full of cash, found by Tisha in their conjugal Pacific Plaza condo in The Fort.
Andy’s explanation why he kept those pay envelopes: he, being parsimonious, had been “re-using” them.
• The San Francisco condo that was not listed in Andy’s SALN is co-owned by Andy and his eldest sister, Susan Bautista-Afan of ABS-CBN Foundation, this according to brother Martin.
To counter-check this claim, a US-based researcher conducted a California-wide property search, with zero results.
Instead, what showed up as the owner of the twobedroom, two bathroom unit at The District was not even sister Susan but one “Maria Afan,” said to be a daughter of Susan with Alberto Afan, a De La Salle accounting alumnus who now works in a biotechnology company also in the Bay Area.
That condo unit, according to the redfin real estate listing company, was bought for nearly $1.3 million in late August last year, two weeks after the alleged Hong Kong loan document was signed.
• Andy admitted to maintaining only one offshore account, with the Bank of Singapore, whose former chief executive, Renato de Guzman, also happens to be a good friend and neighbor of Andy’s mother-in-law.
Among the family friends who had tried to mediate between Andy and Tisha was retired banker Ramon Sy, whose advice on handling women should have on hindsight been taken to heart.
As told by Andy to CNN Philippines’ Pinky Webb, he and his estranged wife were only “two words away” from signing the term sheet before the settlement talks broke down.
Among Andy’s demands from his estranged wife, should she accept his financial package: “Represent and warrant that Tisha has read and conducted an extensive due diligence on the above documents and the emails and have found nothing suspicious, illegal, contrary to law in respect of the transactions contained therein or anything else that may give rise to a cause of action, claim for damages or any other forms of criminal, civil or administrative liability.”
Andy also wanted Tisha to “keep strictly all the information learned from the documents and emails and shall not disclose or use these information for any purpose.”
These two stipulations, of course , beg the question: what could be contained in those emails and documents that an upright, decent government official wants to extract a code of omerta from the mother of his four children?
E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com