Roxas and Robredo, on their way to a campaign sortie, aboard a helicopter owned by Gutierrez's Air Juan. (Courtesy: Miro Quimbo's Instagram Account)

Election Spending Caps

Roxas SALN vis-a-vis Election Spending Spree

Roxas and the Mining Industry

Lepanto Consolidated Mining Company, Manila Mining Corporation, Philex Mining Corporation, Marinduque Mining and Industrial Corporation, Mindanao Mother Lake Mines, Samar Mining Company, and, Western Minolco Corporation.

Roxas and his Campaign Planes

Small-scale permit, large-scale mining

SRMI's Tubay Mining Site: 5 square kilometers, twice the size of Pateros.

The yellow area surrounded by lush green forests, equivalent to about 570 hectares, shows the extent of SRMI’s “small scale” mining activities.

Small scale mining is supposed to rely mainly on manual labor, but SRMI's Tubay Mine appears to rely on heavy equipment and facilities commonly found in large-scale mining operations. Clockwise from Top-left: an excavator; an office building or a processing facility;three tailings ponds; a convoy of dump trucks; another dump truck; yet another pair of dump trucks

SRMI failed to pay municipal taxes and business fees (₱100 million).

SRMI did not pay extraction fees (₱120 million)

SRMI did not pay 1% royalty fees to the lumads, identified as Accredited Tribal Sectoral Leaders of Indigenous Cultural Communities of Tubay.

PNoy and Mining

For example,

that for the year 2014, SRMI paid ₱45.3 million in royalties to Tubay’s Lumads, representing 1% of SRMI’s total mining review for that fiscal year. That is, SRMI 2014 revenues from their Tubay site were at ₱4.53 billion. The 2014 market rate was US$ 41 per ton.

Courtesy: Fight Corruption in Caraga

Using the

, ₱ 4.53 billion translates to about 2.48 million tons of ore mined in 2014.

In 2010, then-Presidential candidate Noynoy Aquino used a Gutierrez-owned plane for his campaign sorties, said Bondoc.

In 2012, Rappler reported that Gutierrez accompanied President Aquino in his official 2012 US and UK trips, where he was included in the group of “Top 26 Filipino businessmen” that comprised official Philippine delegation.

In 2013, Former PCDSPO Secretary Ricky Carandang, who served the PNoy administration, was reported to have plans of becoming the Head of Corporate Communications for either one of Gutierrez’s companies after his resignation from his cabinet-level position in 2013, according to The Manila Times. A recent report suggests that Carandang currently works for Air Juan.

Sec. Ricky Carandang

In 2014, aerial footage of SunChamp’s Batangas farm was captured using a Gutierrez-owned helicopter, according to the United Nationalist’s Alliance. The footage was used in the senate hearings concerning corruption allegations against Vice-President Jejomar Binay.

Future of Mining in a Roxas Presidency

First, Roxas runs on a platform of continuity

In particular, despite falling nickel prices in the past few years, this monopoly will come in handy as nickel prices are expected to shoot up after Indonesia decided to implement a nationwide export ban on mineral products. Bloomberg says this is great news for Philippine nickel miners like SRMI.





Second, Roxas isn't likely to pass FOI

This way, the common people, including citizen journalists like Thinking Pinoy, will still find it extremely difficult to discover anomalies like SRMI’s Tubay operations. For example, it took Thinking Pinoy several days of research for this article. If FOI existed, Thinking Pinoy could have just requested documents from the SEC, the MGB, the BIR, Customs, and every other related government agency and consequently write a more detailed, more authoritative report. But it isn’t the case.





Third, the final version of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) is morely likely to favor SRMI and Friends under a Roxas presidency.

The ARMM has significant oil and natural gas reserves . Major deposits have been discovered in Liguasan Marsh in Central Mindanao, and various points in the the Sulu Sea. Of course, Guttierez and friends want a stake in that, and of the four presidentiables, LP’s Roxas is their best shot.









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