A total fabrication.

Atty. Sheila Sison, counsel of the Yanson Four

The very audit report of top accounting firm, Sycip Gorres and Velayo which Vallacar Transit Incorporated matriarch Olivia Yanson (OVY) often cited as basis of pointing blame on her own daughter Celina Yanson-Lopez factually did not even identified Celina as the culprit behind this purported 380 million peso fund mess.

The fact is– that amount is even a “pure lie, a total fabrication” according to Atty. Sheila Sison, counsel of the Yanson Four, which, with 61% shareholdings in VTI, remains the majority group.

In a statement, Sison says it is totally unfair for OVY to even raise this issue because the stated amount–380 million php– is an amount which is entirely fictional. The very SG&V audit report says that there is no missing 380 million php amount since most of the alleged missing funds were actually traced thru bank statements. The company paid that amount of money to third party suppliers.

What is clear is that Celina, again based on Atty. Sison’s statement, was not the one authorised to sign those disbursements which happened right at the heart of their Manila operations–the Manila Purchasing Office or MPO.

The report which was signed even by the company’s internal auditors show the trail of organised thievery some people in the MPO did. Disbursements were made thru blank checks signed by a guy whom the family, especially the matriarch Olivia Yanson, highly trusted and even considered as part of the clan because of his long-time association with the family.

This guy, sources say, reportedly conspired with the MPO cashier. It was the cashier who eventually got the boot and charged before the courts when at least 26 million pesos got lost in translation.

Why is it that Celina deemed it unfair to hear her mother blame her for something which she clearly had no hand at all? OVY charged that Celina did not do anything to correct the situation. Celina claims that it was she who informed the board of directors about the missing funds and it was she who even recommended for the filing of charges against this fair haired favourite boy of her mother.

The company procedure is very clear–Manila Purchasing Office requests for money from the company headquarters in Mansilingan, Bacolod City. When the requests for purchasing or acquisition is granted, MPO then fills out a check and the Mansilingan office is the one who funds it. What Celina and the rest of the finance officers of the company only did was to effect the funding of these checks, and nothing more.

The report shows that Celina was not the signatories for the purchasing orders and no signature of hers was identified in all those financial transactions.

” Blame it on pakikisama and my mother’s pity towards the guy,” says Celina in an interview with a Bacolod-based journalist. The guy responsible for the mess was asked to tender his resignation. However, no criminal or civil case was filed against him, after Olivia requested or asked the board to spare him.

This guy lives allegedly in luxury in one of the towns of Negros island while the hapless former cashier who encashed those checks, was the one who got the rear end of the stick when she was charged with large scale estate and theft before the QC courts. Yan