The Urban Bank case: a statement from Borlongan

The following is a statement from Teodoro C. Borlongan, President of Urban Bank in the Philippines at the time it was taken over by the Monetary Board and the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation. FinanceAsia magazine in its July 2000 issue published The Baptism of the Liquidator, an account of the Urban Bank closure from the point of view of the PDIC. Borlongan and other Urban Bank officials are facing charges of "economic sabotage".

In various newspapers last October 14, 2000, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas published a statement, misleadingly captioned "BSP says Urban Bank rehab plan on track" or similar to it. However the statement, more than half-page long, did not talk of Urban's re-opening; rather, it lengthily discussed two things - defending BSP's actions of closing the bank, and defending its economic-sabotage charge against Urban officials.