Audacious as it may seem, that appears to be Lucio Tan’s strategy. And it appears to be working. “It is the height of chutzpah,” observes Monsod, “to use the same money you got from tax evasion to corrupt government officials to do things your way, so it becomes a really vicious circle. Do you realize that the money he uses to pay off justices, lawyers, politicians is money that belongs to us? That the money that he spends on elections is really money that has been stolen from the government?”

Given a malleable bureaucracy, a fallible legal system and politicians susceptible to influence, it is also money that is well spent. To be sure, if these allegations are true, Tan carries a fair share of the blame. But he is able to operate in this manner because of a lack of bureaucratic coherence and competence, a judiciary that seems to care little about the rule of law, and politicians who sell themselves to the highest bidder. That is why Ramos’s determined efforts to make Tan pay have come to naught: Because the tycoon had checkmated the government’s every move.

When the BIR filed the famous P26.5-billion tax evasion charges against Fortune Tobacco, Tan wangled favorable decisions all the way up to the Supreme Court amid rumors of payoffs to justices and of the undue influence wielded in the high court by Estelito Mendoza, Fortune’s ace lawyer who was once Marcos’s solicitor general. Tan’s opponents, including Ramos officials, made pointed references to the not-too-startling coincidence that the Supreme Court justices who ruled in Tan’s favor were once Mendoza’s underlings at the Office of the Solicitor General.

In Congress, legislators allied with Tan exerted every effort to thumb down the Ramos administration’s proposed tax law that would chip away at the tax advantages enjoyed by Fortune Tobacco and Asia Brewery. The resistance particularly in the House of Representatives was so fierce that Ramos himself got involved, at one point threatening to reveal the names of legislators on Lucio Tan’s payroll. Newspapers reported how congressmen would disappear in the middle of sessions, supposedly to consult with the tycoon or his advisers.

Some of the most virulent opposition to the tax package came from the Northern Alliance composed of legislators representing the tobacco-producing provinces of Northern Luzon. They were so pro-Tan that they were referred to as the “Northern Allowance.” In the end, a compromise version of the tax law was passed because of the persistence of Senator Juan Ponce Enrile who, for reasons of his own, single-handedly rammed the bills through the bicameral committee of Congress.

“I know that (Tan) has supported congressmen, senators, mayors. Alam mo si Lucio, maraming kaibigan (Lucio has many friends). I’m surprised he has friends in Mindanao and the Visayas—congressmen, mayors,” says Mison. “I would say that if ever he gets something, it’s because of the friendships that he has cultivated for many years.”

Such friendships continue to the present day. Last year, with Zamora’s open backing, Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez was named head of the powerful House ways and means committee, which debates on tax matters. On his birthday last December 20, Suarez hosted a party at the Manila Hotel for his colleagues at the House. The honored guest was Lucio Tan on whose behalf Suarez dispensed Christmas presents to the congressmen: packages containing P100,000 each, according to legislators who were there.

Suarez, recount officials who have seen him in action, has difficulty telling the difference between ad valorem and specific taxes. But he seems so eager to please that he initiated an investigation charging that Fortune’s main rival, La Suerte Cigar and Cigarette Co., evaded tax payments of P8 billion. The charge was so preposterous that at one committee hearing, the BIR representative had to give a lecture on how taxes are computed.

Tan’s friendships seemed to have borne fruit at the BIR as well, where officials sympathetic to him merely cooled their heels and sat on complaints until they could be decided at a more propitious time. Liwayway Chato, appointed BIR commissioner by Ramos, says she got “very bad cooperation” from the bureau’s lawyers. “They were using the same argument that Estelito Mendoza was using,” she recalls. “It came to the point that I was wondering whether they were lawyering for us or for Fortune Tobacco.”

At one point, Chato says, a folder of documents containing important evidence against Fortune disappeared, prompting her to replace the chief and the assistant chief of the prosecution division, whom she suspected of cooperating with the company. “I could not trust them,” she says. “They kept insisting there was no case. You could really see that there was pressure on their part not to do anything about the case.” BIR examiners, however, managed to dig up information to bolster the charges. But then, when a new investigation panel was created in accordance with a Supreme Court ruling, the same examiners who had earlier executed affidavits attesting to Fortune’s violations now refused to swear to those affidavits again. “They were saying that some of the things they placed there, they’re not sure anymore,” she says in exasperation.