Camille Villar’s partner in nasty legal breakup
The rumored live-in boyfriend of TV5 host Camille Villar, Erwin Genuino, has been snagged in a nasty legal breakup.
No, no, not with Villar, but with Genuino’s law firm partner.
Worse, Genuino, son of former Pagcor chairman Efraim Genuino and president of Trace College, is being accused by his ex-partner Manuel Camacho of having withdrawn P52 million in supposed partnership funds.
The young Genuino, while not denying the withdrawal, had actually initiated a complaint for accounting, inventory and dissolution of partnership before the Makati Regional Trial Court against Camacho.
Even more baffling, the P52 million supposedly came from Japan’s pachinko king, Kazuo Okada, for what may be diplomatically termed as representation expenses in his plan to develop two casinos and three resorts near the Mall of Asia.
Camacho, ironically, had himself interviewed by the US lawyers of Wynn Resorts looking for dirt against Okada, an investigation that led to the much-publicized partnership fallout and a multiplicity of suits between Las Vegas gaming mogul Steve Wynn and the Japanese billionaire.
It was not immediately clear why Camacho had agreed to collaborate with the Wynn lawyers when he and Genuino prior to the dissolution of Camacho Genuino and Associates represented Okada.
Camacho was supposed to have even told the Wynn lawyers that he met Okada in Japan “at the behest of then Pagcor chairman Genuino”, a meeting that resulted in Camacho and Genuino’s son replacing SyCip Salazar Hernandez & Gatmaitan as Okada’s counsels.
And for muckrakers, Camacho’s account on the missing P52 million is even more explosive than the revelations about certain Macau accommodations extended to Pagcor chairman Cristino Naguiat.
“When he (Camacho) questioned this withdrawal, he was eventually told...that the funds had been withdrawn to be used as a ‘cash payoff’ to the mayor of the municipality in which the Entertainment City Manila project is located,” said the Freeh, Sporkin & Sullivan report.
The so-called Freeh report is one of the exhibits in the ongoing case filed by Wynn Resorts against Okada before the District Court of Clark County in Nevada.
The P52 million was supposed to, according to the Freeh report, “facilitate approval of the use of some plots of land to build roads needed for Mr. Okada’s casino project.”
Back in Makati, the judge hearing the Genuino vs Camacho case, Joselito Villarosa of Branch 66, suffered collateral damage after the Court of Appeals last month directed him to inhibit from the case to “avoid being misunderstood,” after Villarosa ordered the sheriff to seize the office properties and equipment of the Camacho law firm.
Genuino claimed he had advanced over P7 million for the lease security deposit and office equipment of the law partnership, with Camacho, who is in his mid-70s, being only an “industrial partner.”