Fashionista wife spurns P120M divorce deal with 3rd husband
If you think the Andy Bautista-Tish Cruz break-up was bad, you have not read or heard of the depths of depravity in the following case.
An oil trader who had previously agreed to a P120million divorce settlement has been cornered by his estranged and allegedly battered wife with a statutory rape case, while negotiating for a bigger piece of his financial pipeline, P300 million, per husband’s account.
The wife, a fashion designer since her Assumption days, has found a powerful weapon, her college-age daughter by her previous husband. The daughter has accused her step-father, the wife’s third and present husband, of having inappropriately touched her private parts in 2009, when she was 11-years-old.
The oil trader/third husband, in his defense, has rounded up three first cousins of the daughter, also all female, to rat on their complaining cousin’s alleged sexual proclivities, while digging up dirt on the wife’s previous marriages, with rape, battery, and chicanery as a common thread.
Married in 2006 after a whirlwind courtship, she is his first and only wife, the couple had by November 2015 already agreed to a legal separation, their supposedly born-again beliefs having failed to overcome their irreconcilable differences.
The oil trader on record had agreed to a P120-million settlement package for the wife, with the wife subsequently withdrawing apparently as precondition to the financial windfall the two temporary protection order cases she and her daughter filed in Quezon City.
It is not clear what happened in between, but the mother and daughter then filed a criminal complaint of rape in Antipolo, where the family had briefly lived in 2009 when the alleged physical sexual molestation happened.
Unfortunately for the husband, it is also in Antipolo where the stars are apparently aligned in the wife’s favors.
Consider these. The wife’s brother happens to be the pastor to the province's political bosses. The criminal complainant was heard and decided by a female prosecutor, reviewed and approved by another female prosecutor, before being finally approved by the city prosecutor, who also happens to be a member of the fairer sex.
Despite the absence of any third-party corroborating evidence, the prosecutors essentially relied on what they claim to be a smoking gun, a letter of apology said to be written by the oil trader but which he denied as fabricated.
“First of all, I just want to apologize for touching you inappropriately,” said the letter, allegedly written by the step-father to the step-daughter after his wife had confronted him in 2014, five years after the alleged offense had happened.
To those seeking to divine the couple's identities, here are more clues. Fashionistas are familiar with the wife. She operates a boutique in an upscale mall, selling parallel imports of Hermes, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton bags, and counting on the likes of Sen. Pia Cayetano and Sheila Romero, wife of party-list congressman Mikee Romero, as clients.
The husband is a son of a Cory Aquino-era energy official.
Incidentally, the rape case has been raffled off and landed, is this still a surprise?, to a female judge, who has recently retired, only to be replaced by another female judge, a new Duterte appointee. Patay kang bata ka!
Court upholds Medical City putsch
Magsaysay awardee Alfredo Bengzon survived the Cabinet infighting during the Cory Aquino presidency, where he served as health secretary, but not a shareholders’ revolt right in his own corporate backyard.
Bengzon’s fight to retain his decades-long control over Medical City has further dimmed after a Pasig court last week effectively entrenched a new board with a 20-day temporary restraining order against Bengzon, who is turning 83 next month.
Meanwhile, the immediate cause of the shareholders’ revolt, Bengzon’s daughter-in-law, has been placed on preventive suspension amid the financial hemorrhaging of the Guam subsidiary which she headed, along with the Sta. Rosa, Laguna branch.
As it turned out, even equity was not on Bengzon’s side. The Medical City patriarch only had 0.11 percent stake in the hospital chain that he grew and ruled for decades much like a family corporation.
Money talks
• Islacom has long ceased operations as a telecom company, but both House and the Senate not only renewed its franchise but also have agreed to grant it tax-andduty-free importation of “radio telecommunications and electronic communications equipment, machinery and spare parts” for the next 25 years.
• Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri and his brother Bukidnon Rep. Manuel Antonio Zubiri have filed identical bills seeking to grant Philippine citizenship to Chinoy businessman Kitson Soriano Kho, who donated P500 million to build the country’s biggest drug rehabilitation center in Zubiris’ province.
Kho is also behind the 407-hectare reclamation project in Manila Bay, with Mayor Joseph Estrada enthusiastically backing the proposal to create the artificial island across Tondo.
Heard through the grapevine
Retail entrepreneur Ricco Ocampo has stepped down as president and director of the Manila House, but his resignation has nothing to do with a painful-to-watch video clip that was making the Viber rounds last week.
Ocampo had already been replaced by Katrina PanlilioCraig when Ocampo’s meltdown, over the price and size of a fish dish brought to his attention by a dissatisfied diner, happened in late June.
It is a testament to the media clout of the Manila House that, even as late as yesterday, none of the catty society bloggers had posted the two-minute clip, a teachable moment on anger management and the dark side of fashion mavens.
E-mail: