Saturday, June 23, 2007 Smart snubs NTC hearing over P14M e-load case; 3 more sued
IT WAS a hearing the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) called yesterday so Smart Communications and a dealer could discuss the P14 million worth of electronic loads that the dealer bought for resale yet Smart allegedly captured back into its system.
But “everybody turned up except Smart,” said Alvin Butch Cañares, a lawyer for Integrated Distribution Network Inc. (IDNI).
“They (Smart) told us that everybody except people from marketing were out of the country. We are having difficulty in believing that,” he said in an interview after the cancelled 2 p.m. hearing.
IDNI also filed a potentially non-bailable supplemental charge for estafa and violation of the Access Devices Regulation Act of 1998 against three Smart executives.
Danilo Mojica, Florante Jimenez and Robert Galang are now impleaded in the original complaint that originally named only the company and its president, Napoleon Nazareno.
Estafa
“We firmly believe that justice would not be completely served if only Napoleon Nazareno will be named as party respondent considering that the acts complained of… could not have been consummated without the active, willful, (and) deliberate participation of certain employees of Smart,” read the complaint.
Considering the huge amount they have been “defrauded” of and the means employed by the respondents, the complainants said the charge of estafa under Article 314 and/or 318 of the Revised Penal Code should be appreciated in relation to Presidential Decree 818, which is a non-bailable offense.
IDNI also impleaded some yet to be identified men and women who “were in the position” to “actually and knowingly” propagate, disseminate and declare the “malicious, dishonest and false statement that the reason for the deactivation was the alleged breach of an X-Deal (exchange deal) between Smart and IDNI.”
The truth was, IDNI said, they paid in cash for every e-load they purchased from Smart.
Smart is deferring reactions.
“It’s rather hard to comment given that I have not yet seen the complaint. We will defer reactions until we get the chance to study it,” said Ramon Isberto, who is in-charge of Smart’s corporate affairs.
E-load deal
Businessman Salvador P. Gonzales and Ronaldo J. Chua earlier charged Smart Communications Inc., as represented by Nazareno, before the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor.
They accused Smart of illegally terminating their capacity to re-sell the e-loads, which they bought from Smart months before.
Smart supposedly did this a day after the May 14 elections, when sales were expected to be high, by deactivating the Sub-Dealer Subscriber Identification Modules or SD-Sims that IDNI distributed to various access points in their sales network.
Gonzales and Chua said they sent numerous letters to Smart from March to April questioning why the function had been barred.
In response, they said Smart repeatedly said the matter would be looked into. But days before the deadline, Smart said the function would ultimately not be activated by virtue of a management decision. (KNR)
