Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Fe Barin is staying put despite resignation calls for her and her colleagues in the five-man commission dragged into the Legacy mess.

In a press conference on Wednesday with Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita in Malacañang, Barin said she has spent many years in government service and the multi-billion-worth Legacy mess is the first time she has been dragged into a scandal.

"I will be 75 soon. I spent 53 years, more than half of my life, in government. I hope it will not end this way," Fe Barin told reporters. She said she will carry on with her job and has no plans of stepping down or going on leave unless asked by President Arroyo herself.

Ermita said Malacañang has no plans to let Barin go and is waiting for the results of a lifestyle check that President Arroyo, on Tuesday, ordered on all SEC officials.

Failures

The SEC has been hit by sharp criticism over the its failure to detect and address the collapse of three pre-need firms that are part of the now bankrupt Legacy Group of financial services firms. Thousands of pre-need planholders bought an aggregate P7 billion financial products from the Legacy Group.

During last Monday's Senate hearing, legislators hammered SEC's regulatory lapses in the Legacy-related failures. Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile sought the resignation of Jesus Martinez, Barin's colleague in the commission, after two former executives of the Legacy Group presented paper trails that implied Martinez protected Legacy's pre-need firms so they could continue their operations despite not meeting SEC requirements.

Martinez, a political appointee who is retiring this week, is now facing investigations, including a lifestyle check, for possible administrative lapses. He is also not allowed to leave the country.

On Tuesday, however, Senator Enrile called for the inclusion of Barin and the other SEC commissioners in the administrative investigations since "one [commissioner] is not the commission. They must share the responsibility for the fiasco that has happened," he said.

Enrile said a resolution he would file would express the chamber’s "disgust" and seek the resignation of all commission members.
Aside from Barin and Martinez, the other commissioners are Ma. Juanita Elegir-Cueto, Raul J. Palabrica, and Thaddeus E. Venturanza.

Barin's profile

Before assuming her post at the helm of the SEC in September 1, 2004, Barin spent decades in various regulatory bodies engaged in energy and in banking and financial services

She was a member of the Monetary Board, the central bank's policy-making body, from 2002 to 2004, and worked closely as consultant or legal counsel to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, and before that, with the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation. 

Barin was also the first chairperson of the Energy Regulatory Commission, which, in 2001, was a newly-created quasi-judicial body mandated to regulate the electric power industry.

Despite her credentials, her appointment to the SEC, however, has been widely seen as a politically motivated. Her closeness to President Arroyo and First Gentleman Mike Arroyo, who was Barin's partner in a law firm in the eighties, has clouded opinions about her ability to do her job independently.

"The insinuations that I can get favors from the president anytime are not true. In the first place, I was appointed to this position to do a job. Should I keep on disturbing the President to ask for what I want?" she told Malacañang reporters.

She added, "There is no truth that I was a godmother in the wedding of the President."

Pre-need mess

When Barin assumed her post in the SEC, the pre-need industry woes, especially those that involved market leader College Assurance Plan (CAP), were just unveiling. CAP's eventual collapse left almost one million planholders unable to benefit from the financial products they bought.

In 2005, other high-profile pre-need firms, such as Yuchengco-led Pacific Plans Inc., started admitting that they, too, were in financial trouble.

Clients of then embattled Pacific Plans formed PEP Coalition, a group of parents with investments in the pre-need firm. Barin and PEP's president, Philip Piccio are not in good terms. Piccio has helped pave the way for Legacy's two former executives to present documentary evidence that pinned down SEC commissioner Martinez in Monday's Senate hearing.

The two former Legacy executives were charged by the BSP with syndicated estafa for their role in Legacy's questionable practices.