All info off traders

A prominent trader here who was identified as one of the favored contractors of the provincial government in a latest Commission on Audit (COA) report has disappeared from the public eye after incurring more than P200 million in debt from various business establishments in the region.

This after groups of irate creditors from as far as Cagayan province converged on the residence of trader Norma dela Cruz in a failed bid to collect the millions of pesos in outstanding debt which she incurred since last year from them through her wholesale rice and corn buying and hardware businesses.

Dela Cruz manages the Karingal Supermarket in this town through her firm Norma’s General Merchandise which is also engaged in wholesale rice, corn and hardware trading business. She is also identified as one of two favored contractors of the provincial government.

According to a business creditor of Dela Cruz from Cagayan province, the trader had incurred the ire of her business partners after she was found to have issued them series of bouncing checks totaling over P200 million.

Last Friday, a number of creditors rallied in front of the Karingal Supermarket here in an effort to collect Dela Cruz’s outstanding debts but apparently she and her family had already fled.

“We are fed up with her trying to evade us. If she doesn’t want to patch up matters we are going to file a case of large scale estafa against her,” said an irate businessman from Isabela.

Dela Cruz is an in-law of the prominent Sevillena clan here where one of the scions, Nestor Sevillena, is the incumbent mayor.

A number of suppliers of her family’s supermart which is one of the biggest in the province had started last week to confiscate her assets in order to recover losses from her failure to pay them.

Meanwhile, reports indicated that the provincial government was trying to wash its hands from the controversial businesswoman whom they had engaged in alleged questionable contracts by reportedly freezing the payment of its remaining obligations to her.

“This move will not remove the stain on the hand of the provincial government regarding its questionable transactions in which Mrs. Dela Cruz has been a willing pawn,” said a resident here.

One of Dela Cruz’s creditors, Rowell Aurelio of Cagayan, said that the businesswoman had already incurred around P150 million in debts from fellow traders in Cagayan alone.

Dela Cruz’s firm was prominently identified in a recent COA report as one of the provincial government’s favored contractors. Among its deals was the provincial government’s questionable purchase of some P24 million worth of cement.

In its report, the COA said that procurement of the said items by the provincial government “was not in conformity with RA (Republic Act) 9184 (governing the government’s procurement and bidding regulations), which resulted in the failure of attaining more transparent system of procurement.”

The COA’s audit report said that the provincial government had resorted to direct contracting or awarded the purchase of the materials only to two contractors, one of them Norma’s General Merchandise, in disregard of the government’s procurement and bidding processes. - Source

This entry was posted on Вторник, Январь 27th, 2009 at 0:30 and is filed under Unsorted. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.