SGV CLEARED CELINA: ‘P380-M missing funds is pure fabrication’

By: Francis Allan L. Angelo

A BLATANT lie, if not pure fabrication.

This is how the camp of Celina Yanson-Lopez, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and stockholder of Vallacar Transit Inc. (VTI), described allegations that she was responsible for the P380 million funds that went missing from their bus company’s coffers.

In a statement, Celina’s lawyer Sheila Sison said the country’s top accounting firm, Sycip, Gorres and Velayo (SGV), did not identify her client as the one responsible for the fund mess.

Sison said it was Celina who raised the issue before the VTI board and pushed for an investigation.

“The alleged SGV report as claimed by the other camp that CYL has at least P380 million unaccounted advances/liabilities to the company is a total lie, if not libelous. Nothing in the SGV audit report mentions or identifies CYL as the person responsible for the alleged unaccounted disbursements,” Sison said.

Sison added that the amount claimed by the camp of the clan matriarch Olivia Yanson is not as big as they alleged, since the audit already established that most of these amounts were paid to suppliers per bank statements.

“It is not correct to say that there were P380 million in unaccounted funds as they were indeed confirmed to have been paid to suppliers per the documents. What the report noted was that some of the transactions made lack supporting documents, which cannot be attributed to CYL as those supporting documents should come from the Manila Purchasing Office (MPO) and not the head office based on company procedure. Perhaps, the other camp should ask the former company official who oversaw MPO for those documents.”

Sison said these irregularities discovered in May 2018 emanated from the MPO, and not the VTI offices in Mansilingan, Bacolod City.

In an earlier statement, Celina blamed the discovery of the missing funds as the true reason why the Yansons broke ranks and are fighting for control of VTI, operator of Ceres Bus Liner.

Sison, who also represents the Yanson majority stockholders, disputed allegations by Olivia Yanson that Celina could have prevented the loss of about P26 million as the company’s CFO.

“On the contrary, CYL (Celina) was not even among the persons identified by SGV to be involved in the funding or liquidation process. The findings in the audit report point to the cashier who now has a pending case for qualified theft in QC. That cashier does not report directly to CYL but to the former employee who is a known pet and favorite of OVY (Olivia Yanson). The irregularities were all done in the MPO and not in VTI’s Head Office. It was the persons responsible in the MPO who altered/tampered with documents for funding requests to the head office.”

Sison believes that it is totally unfair to attribute the mess to Celina when in fact, it was she who brought the attention of the anomaly to the company’s internal audit department on the unauthorized disbursements being made in the MPO, as the company’s own internal audit reports showed.

“Nothing in any of the audit reports also stated that CYL was the one responsible for the unauthorized disbursements.”

The company audit report, signed by all internal auditors of the company, identified a former company official who oversaw operations in the MPO and the MPO cashier as the ones responsible for the unauthorized transactions.

The same MPO cashier was charged with qualified theft now pending in the QC prosecutor’s office.

The case, Sison added, was filed last September 2018, shortly after the completion of internal audit reports initiated in May and June 2018.

After the filing of the complaints, the Yansons began breaking apart, with siblings Leo Rey, who worked for the establishment of the Manila office, and Ginette siding with their mother Olivia who defended the actions of the MPO vice president.