Rigoberto D Tiglao

Colossal Deception Rigoberto D Tiglao

The book exposes one of the biggest deceptions ever foisted on the Philippine nation, the total domination of our telecommunications industry by foreigners and its deliberate concealment. This is a grave violation of the Philippine Constitution, a fact that was ignored by the Aquino administration when it chose to side with foreign interests instead of following a Supreme Court order to stop the foreign control of a strategic public utility. While claiming to be majority-owned by Filipinos, the reality is that the biggest stockholder of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., which operates Smart Communications, is the Indonesian billionaire and former Suharto crony Anthoni Salim with his minor partner the giant Japanese telco NTT. Globe Telecom's biggest stockholder on the other hand is the Singaporean state firm Singtel. With their lucrative duopoly the foreign firms have remitted out of the Philippines gargantuan profits totaling $9 billion from 2000 to 2015. How are these foreign firms able to bypass the constitutional limit on foreign control of public utilities with little resistance from the Philippine body politic? This book exposes the chicanery behind the acquisition of the country's biggest corporations, the corruption and cronyism that had allowed this to happen, and the pernicious plot to amend the Constitution to perpetuate the foreign control of companies over vital sectors of our economy.