Reading the news that the Tricubes shares went through the roof (almost 300%), Tricubes shares soar on news of working with Microsoft, brought back some memories of the time I was working in Manila, when a similar event almost brought down the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), and also brought allegations of insider trading and even murder against the owners. It was headlines news for weeks. Let me try to recollect here.
Sometime in 1999. when Joseph Estrada was the President, one of his known cronies at the time, (let's call him DT) was awarded a licence to implement a lottery project called the 'Online Bingo'. No tenders were ever called, and a next to impossible deadline was given to to complete the project. Nobody knew exactly what was going on, but the company which was linked with the Bingo project rose from 1peso to an astounding 107pesos when the market almost collapsed.
The Bingo lottery made a show of starting for a while, but did not last for more than a year at the most. Naturally, many who held the now worthless Bingo shares pressed for investigations, and even the President (and some senators)admitted that he held some shares as obviously he could not offload them in time.
The investigation was ongoing, when the event took a tragic turn. A PR Consultant of the Bingo company, who supposedly wanted to 'talk' to the ex President Ramos was found murdered with his driver, and their vehicle burnt and thrown into a ravine. The owner of the Bingo company, DT fled the Philippines, and was last rumored to be somewhere in the Asia Pacific region.
Can we see some similarities in Bingo story and Tricubes? Of course we are not talking about murders and assassinations, but is there anything wrong with a company, when its share value can soar 300% in a matter of days? Will this trigger an investigation by the Sec Comm., or will this be classified as another 'close one eye' episode by our weary citizens.... We will have to wait and see...
Think about it
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