Senate witness shows favored firms’ decade-long monopoly of  Makati deals

Suspected dummies of Vice President Jejomar Binay cornered the bulk of Makati’s IT, janitorial, and security services worth P5.6 billion ($120 million) by running the same companies that won bids in the span of almost a decade. This is the “initial finding” of a review of service contracts in the Philippines’ richest city that the leadership of Acting Makati Mayor Kid Peña ordered. Violeta Lazo, acting head of Makati’s general services department, told the Senate that her office found interlocking stockholders and signs of collusion in the contracts. In the latest of a year-long series of Senate hearings, Lazo cited some of the “red flags” she spotted: the same companies always won the bids, and the winning companies had common owners or stockholders.

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