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By Bohol Chronicle

Four investors with the Provident Lending Investors, a single-proprietorship lending establishment based in Tagbilaran City, filed a joint complaint affidavit against it with the Securities and Exchange Commission for their financial losses, alleging violation of securities and investment laws.

Estanislao Galano, Disederio Ruloma, Junie Villadores and Romulo Oppus, all of Tagbilaran City, submitted their complaint through the SEC region office in Cebu City, invoking the said office to exercise its prosecutory authority to investigate violations of RA 8799 and RA 9474, which are laws providing securities regulations and requiring their corporate management.

Alleged in the same affidavit was the four invested by depositing with the Provident Lending Investors, managed by Ruben Donaire as manager-owner, assisted by his wife Lena Donaire as treasurer, some amounts of money, duly acknowledged through a certificate of trust investment and issued with a promissory note that the same would earn an interest of 2 percent monthly.

The financial arrangement set a condition that investors may take back their deposits one month after an advance notice and staggered at no more than 10 percent of the total deposit for each withdrawal.
         

Not only were these conditions violated they claimed. After the interest income was unilaterally reduced to 1.5 percent, then 1.0 percent, then altogether to nothing, the principal deposit could not be withdrawn while not shown as pending collection from delinquent borrowers.

It can be recalled that the Bohol Chronicle was first to feature as a news item in its October 10, 2010, issue the investors' problem with the lending firm, to attract public attention and preempt any further damage it may cause anybody. It revealed that some P100 million in deposited investment was already accumulated, that Lena Donaire had left the country and that its business was slowing down.

The revelation could have caused sudden apprehension among the investors that presumably prompted Ruben Donaire to invite them on October 31, 2010, to his office for a dialogue/meeting, but only a few of the roughly 180 investors attended.

As sourced by the Chronicle from Galano in an interview, it was learned that the meeting focused on rehabilitating Provident Lending Investors' lending vigor to meet its obligation to investors, but Galano noted that the effort might run afoul of existing laws in light of its failure to register first as a corporation, and observed further that in the meeting Donaire was evasive about and could not satisfactorily explain the whereabouts of the more than P100 million invested.

Aware that Donaire had either mortgaged or disposed most of his properties, the four complainants filed their affidavit after consulting with some of the investors about their intention in a meeting with them last January 16. It was the initial step to unravel a mystery difficult to believe as having been orchestrated by only one man.

Hopefully, Galano added, it will snow-ball to wake up all the investors about their worsening predicament to come out of anonymity and initiate a court action, outside of what the SEC might take, for a criminal case to prosper for possible breach of contract, estafa, or syndicated estafa, or even plunder and, ultimately, locate where the money went.

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