• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The statement was issued by Atty. CJ Narvasa, counsel of Yanson siblings, including Roy, Emily, Ricardo Jr. and Maria Celina, known as the Y4, in response to the amended decision of the Court of Appeals 20th Division requiring his clients to surrender certificates of title and related documents they had allegedly previously admitted to be in their possession.
Narvasa said the Court of Appeals order is not a judgment on the merits of the cases involving the documents in question, nor is it to penalize the Y4.
In fact, said decision is not yet final and subject to appeal, he stressed.
Narvasa further said that the Y4 firmly assert that they are under no legal compulsion to submit these documents, particularly at the behest of Hernan B. Omecillo, the purported private complaining witness in the qualified theft case against the Yanson siblings, who they do not recognize as the Chief Operating Officer of Vallacar Transit Incorporated (VTI), and who was never authorized by the legitimate Board of Directors to file the Complaint and represent the corporation.
As majority shareholders of VTI with 61.17 percent shares and of the Board of Directors, only they could legally appoint the COO of the company and have not appointed him as such, he added.
They also clarified that Omecillo is not a Yanson family member and therefore has no right to demand such an action against them whatsoever, because the four are compulsory heirs of the founder of YGBC, the late Dr. Ricardo B. Yanson (RBY) their father, making them the rightful co-owners of the Yanson Group of Bus Companies.
The Y4 are at odds with the family matriarch Olivia and their two other siblings, Leo Rey and Ginette, over the management of the family’s businesses.
The CA directed the Y4 to submit to the custody of the trial court various original and certified true copies of certificates of title and related documents admitted to be in their possession.
“The court a quo is directed to identify the subject documents to be surrendered as indicated in the information and as identified by the prosecutor in Criminal Case No. 20-52097, and in the private respondents’ letter addressed to the Register of Deeds, and in their comment to the DOJ (Department of Justice), and (Criminal Case No.) 20-52097, and to receive these as evidence, place them under custodia legis, and adjudicate as to the list of these subject documents to be surrendered, in accordance with this Decision,” the CA amended decision said.
Narvasa, in a press statement, said that the Y4 have the perfect right under the law, to safe keep the documents and other papers of the company, especially in the face of the forcible intrusion into the YGBC compound in August 2019 by the group of Omecillo with the aid of about three hundred policemen, without a search warrant or lawful order from the court.
On the contrary, the court denied Olivia and Leo Rey Yanson’s application for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the Y4 and illegally took over from the peaceful possession of Y4 – a clear disregard of the court’s authority, he further said.
Narvasa added that matriarch Olivia V. Yanson no longer has any legal personality in the company as she had freely, willingly, and voluntarily relinquished all her shares in the company to her six children in a mutually beneficial reciprocal exchange of rights under a valid extrajudicial settlement (EJS) of the estate of RBY in December 2015.
He added that the Y4 believe that the other party’s request to place the documents and titles in court custody is in the nature of “fishing expedition” aimed at gathering evidence against them especially in the trumped-up case of qualified theft filed by Omecillo where evidence against them is scant to nil.*
