On October 13, 2024, the camp of Olivia and Leo Rey Yanson released a press release gloating over the July 30, 2024 amended decision of the Court of Appeals 20th Division requiring the Yanson 4 (Y4) to surrender certificates of title and related documents they allegedly previously admitted to be in their possession.
However, the Court of Appeals order is not a judgement on the merits of the cases involving the documents in question neither is it to penalize the Y4. In fact, said decision is not yet final and subject to appeal.
The Y4 firmly assert that they are under no legal compulsion to submit these documents, particularly at the behest of Hernan B. Omecillo, the purported private complaining witness in the qualified theft case against the Yanson siblings, who they do not recognize as the Chief Operating Officer of Vallacar Transit Incorporated (VTI) and who was never authorized by the legitimate Board of Directors to file the Complaint and represent the corporation.
As majority shareholders of VTI with 61.17 percent shares and of the Board of Directors, only they could legally appoint the COO of the company and have not appointed him as such. They clarified that Omecillo is not a Yanson family member and therefore has no right to demand such an action against them whatsoever because the four (4) are compulsory heirs of the founder of YGBC, the late Dr. Ricardo B. Yanson their father, making them the rightful co-owners of the Yanson Group of Bus Companies.
The Y4 have the perfect right under the law to safekeep the documents and other papers of the company, especially in the face of the forcible intrusion into the YGBC compound in August 2019 by the group of Omecillo with the aid of about three hundred (300) policemen without a search warrant or lawful order from the court. On the contrary, the court denied Olivia and Leo Rey Yanson’s application for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the Y4 and illegally took over from the peaceful possession of Y4 – a clear disregard of the court’s authority. Thereafter, their faction fabricated criminal cases against the Yanson 4 including a purported qualified theft case that they now gloat over.
The matriarch Olivia V. Yanson no longer has any legal personality in the company as she had freely, willingly, and voluntarily relinquished all her shares in the company to her six (6) children in a mutually beneficial reciprocal exchange of rights under a valid extra-judicial settlement (EJS) of the estate of RBY in December 2015. OVY’s attempt to challenge the validity of the EJS proved unsuccessful and her petition was dismissed by the Bacolod City court in October 2023.
The Y4 believe that the other party’s request to place the documents and titles in court custody is in the nature of “fishing expedition” aimed at gathering evidence against them especially in the trumped-up case of qualified theft filed by Omecillo where evidence against them is scant to nil. Who would believe that they stole what’s theirs in the first place? It is simply absurd to accuse the Y4 of stealing what is rightfully theirs.
The Y4’s majority ownership of the VTI is undisputed. Once, OVY and LRY attempted unsuccessfully to supplant them with their own version of shareholders and board of directors. In fact, LRY’s lawyer, Atty. Jun Maxell Orlina, was suspended by the Supreme Court First Division on August 9, 2023, for participating in an illegally constituted BOD meeting, following an investigation by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP). Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, OVY’s challenge to invalidate the extra-judicial settlement of estate of RBY was dismissed by the court.
