SEN. Ronald dela Rosa yesterday said money from the country’s pension funds can still be invested in the Maharlika Investment Funds even as certain provisions of the proposed act prohibit them.
Dela Rosa said he talked with a number of corporate lawyers who said there is still a legal way in which the funds of the Social Security System, Government Service Insurance System, Philippine Health Insurance Corporation, Home Development Mutual Fund, Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, and the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office can be invested in the proposed MIF — and that is to course the funds through a third party company which in turn will invest in the MIF.
“It is allowed under corporate law… I am really against it but they (economic managers) are finding ways in which SSS, GSIS et al can invest through a third party and this investment firm will invest in Maharlika. So, technically and legally, it is possible,” Dela Rosa said in Filipino during an interview with radio dzBB.
Dela Rosa also said no matter how hard lawmakers try to craft a good measure, there is no such thing as a “perfect law” and that determined individuals can bend the rules by finding loopholes in a measure.
Before Congress went on a sine die adjournment on June 2, the Senate passed on third reading the proposed MIF bill. The Senate version of the measure was later on adopted by the House of Representatives.
The measure has yet to be transmitted to Malacañang for the President’s signature. The Senate secretariat is “perfecting” the bill as it has many typographical and clerical errors.
Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel III has said measures passed on third and final reading could no longer be touched, and asked the Senate leadership to just withdraw the approval of the measure and bring it back to the plenary so that senators can perfect it.
