The only party stung by the goings-on at the Roxas & Co., Inc. (RCI) are not the compradors who are helping themselves secure shares in a company that had long been moribund but the thousands of landless farmers who were fighting to win their piece arable land in the 2,941-hectares of Haciendas Palico, Banilad and Caylaway in Nasugbu, Batangas.
In December 2023, the farmers woke up to find that their claim was thrown to the gutter by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), which swiftly decided to chop up the hacienda and deliver only 1,322 hectares to 1,200 farmer-beneficiaries under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), with RCI retaining the rest of the property.
Furious, the farmers fired their counsel who apparently acceded to the DAR decision without consulting with her clients. A new lawyer took over the case and maintained that the decision cannot be final and executory since the former counsel acted on her own to end the dispute that has dragged on for more than three decades. For the edification of readers, the DAR budget for land acquisition and distribution (LAD) for 2024 is a mind-boggling P6-million. DAR and RCI maintain the verdict is now etched in stone but the farmers are loath to accept that, saying the land to be doled out to them are not fertile and far from their communities.
Meanwhile, RCI, which already shut down its sugar central and sent their workers to pasture, was cutting deals with investors, including Leandro Leviste, the son of Sen. Loren Legarda, for a solar power generating venture, while 250 million treasury shares were sold on May 6 at P2 each to Stonebridge, a property developer owned by Madrigal heiress Ging Gonzalez-Montinola. Ging is the wife of RCI director Gigi Montinola, who quickly left his post.
RCI sold 66.93 million shares at 44 centavos each on January 16, just four days after management updated the directors on the status of the cases before DAR. The department issued an order dividing the 2,644-hectare haciendas in Nasugbu, Batangas evenly between RCI and 1,200 farmers on Dec. 29, 2023, and claimed that the order became final on Jan. 30, 2024 after no party filed any motion for reconsideration or appeal within the 15-day mandatory period following the issuance of the order. The farmers have appealed the DAR decision before the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC), which can still reverse the order.
RCI sold big chunks of treasury shares in two batches – 75 million shares at 65 centavos each on February 20 and 75 million shares at 69 centavos each on March 7. RCI did not reveal the buyer or buyers of the treasury shares which have since rocketed to a high of P4 due to aggressive bargain hunting by Leviste, who sits on the board of SPNEC along with RCI chairman Pedro Roxas.
In contrast, RCI promptly identified Stonebridge, owned by Madrigal heiress Ging Gonzalez-Montinola as the purchaser of 250 million of the 300 million treasury shares sold for P2 each (way below market price) on May 6. Ging is the wife of former RCI director Gigi Montinola. Still, RCI remains mum on who the buyer of the remaining 50 million shares is.
Nasugbu, Batangas Mayor Antonio Jose A. Barcelon is also gunning after RCI, saying the Roxas and Elizalde families have failed to pay the real property taxes (RPT) on the hacienda lands mortgaged to the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI.) Barcelon said that he would revoke RCI’s business permits if the company fails to pay. RCI is sinking under P3.9 billion in long-term debt, a third of which is owed to BPI but it says it only has landholdings in Nasugbu and does not operate any business there. But idle landholdings are not exempt from taxes.
