RCBC Finally Fires Out Maia Santos Dequito

The Asia Forum Journal

Recently, RCBC fired Maia Santos Dequito and Angela Torres. Ms. Torres is crying foul and complains “harassment from RCBC top brass.”

The case of RCBC is unprecedented, but there are other scams that have gone way up higher than the world’s tallest skyscraper that went undetected. Investigators still need to uncover for instance what happened to many heritage accounts at the Central Bank of the Philippines – CBP (renamed by Tita Cory to Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas thereby giving away the CBP’s license as a Bullion Bank.)


Unscrupulous officials and private individuals have been milking the heritage accounts by conning the holders and signatories of those accounts and enriching themselves by forging the signatures and misrepresenting those real holders and signatories.

The RCBC scandal is really such a miniscule affair, too insignificant were it not for the alarm bells it raised due to minor mistakes made by the perpetrators. But…

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Philippine Banking Dearth of Knowledge, Poverty in Intelligence

To conduct a comprehensive survey of bank founder-owners, bank managers, investment leaders, trust executives in the Philippines today, will bring one to misery, sorrow and disgust at the level of knowledge of bankers in the Philippines.

This is not to say that such a case exists only in this particular country. It is common in so many other nations. Only a few bankers truly are aware of their real, noble role as a public service institution, giving and delivering the best kind of service to the people.

In a world where there is no plus side to very small revenue or cash accumulation, bankers are inclined to accommodate rich clientele and Alvin Toffler’s dark characters who form the other side of the coin of that phenomenon in modern times that he calls rapid wealth creation: criminals, underworld, terrorists, drug kingpins and the like.

Extraordinary is a bank manager from Antipolo who declares, “from our subsidiary bank, if you have a transaction to settle with our mother bank, I can endorse you all the way so they will provide you all the assistance you need.” In the case of a bank branch manager of a large bank at V.A. Rufino St., Makati City, the lady manager says it is impossible to endorse a transaction or provide suggestion to the manager of another branch of the same bank. This Makati bank branch manager wants that all transactions must emanate only from her branch.

What will keep a bank manager from endorsing a client? And what will prevent the bank manager from Antipolo to continue to give positive, constructive aid to clients in linking up with other branches of his bank?

The manager from Antipolo is the epitome of the banker’s public service ethic. The manager from V.A. Rufino in Makati is distinctly the portrait of the imbecile banker.

More than 70% to 80% of bankers in the Philippines suffer from a dearth of knowledge and are extremely poor in intelligence as well as wanting in intellect. No one is to blame except their headquarters office and the kind of education bankers get from the Philippine educational system that cannot afford to teach the correct nuances and shades of meaning of banking jargon.

On the part of bank headquarters, the governing policy of their banking corporations are bereft of the desire to promote broader credit to the entrepreneur population. The hard and fast rules of KYC – Know Your Customer, is extremely distorted and warped so much so that even knowing the potential depositors are thieves, murderers, drug lords, gambling lords, possibly as well terrorists fronted for by their relatives and associates, the bank manager will happily endorse the opening of banking relationship with the criminal and proceed to service that enemy of the public.

Effectively, this makes banks Public Enemy, by association, as launderers of the funds of these members of the underworld.

Indeed, the benefit of the bank accepting as much cash and other valuables from these shady characters is tremendous, at least there should be balancing acts on the part of bank management to add a redeeming value to their inclination to accommodate and protect criminal figures.

Compounding the situation of refusal to give away assistance to clients, is the inability of bankers to fulfill their ultimate obligation to service the customer. In many foreign-to-local transactions, if the scheme utilized is new to the Philippine banker, the transaction becomes bogged down not be the absence of interest of the banker but by the lack of fingertip knowledge and second nature skill to attend to the needs of the client.

The exchange between bank management and client becomes endless with no results being delivered by the Philippine bank, whereas the foreign counterpart bank has already done its role: i.e. transmittal of documentary requirements for fund transfer or credit for the Philippine bank client. The time spent becomes long and tedious that all the initial momentum goes to waste.

If the transaction involves a definite, specific timeline, the transaction will go south. The losses might never again be recoverable. For the poor Philippine bank client, the damage could be enormous and irreparable. But will Philippine banker be touched by the final impact upon the client?

They can never probably be affected, unless they did it on purpose and only in a small way. The reason why the Philippine banker will not even think about the great wrong done on the client is that he doesn’t know and therefore he could not care less.