AND SO we start this partial list of Estrada's pals with his ethnic Chinese friends:

• Charlie 'Atong' Ang gained notoriety when he was caught on videotape gambling with Estrada, then vice president, at the Casino Filipino at the Heritage Hotel. The tape was released by former movie and television board chair Manuel Morato at the peak of the 1998 presidential campaign.

  Estrada was said to have distanced himself from the 43-year-old Ang when he was handed an unflattering dossier that detailed Ang's supposed involvement in criminal activities. But somehow, Ang managed to worm his way back into the President's good graces.

  Last year, Ang became chief executive officer of Fontana Resort and Country Club, a membership club that boasts of villas, a water park and a nine-hole golf course at Clark, Pampanga. According to Singson, Estrada is one of the owners of Fontana, as well as the now-defunct Fontainbleau, which Fontana bought out.

  Ang is also consultant of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) on jai alai operations. His company, Power Management and Consultancy, is paid P500,000 a day, excluding bonuses.

  Ang told the Senate in October that another of his companies, Prominent Management and Marketing, is a "consultant" of Pagcor on Bingo 2-Ball, a legalized form of jueteng. It was Ang's decision to award the Bingo 2-Ball franchise in Ilocos Sur to Singson's cousin and long-time foe, former Rep. Eric Singson, that had triggered the governor's rampage, which quickly exploded into the jueteng controversy.
  
  

• Lucio Lao Co topped the list of 14 suspected major smugglers ordered investigated in 1999 by no less than Estrada himself.

  Co's Puregold Duty Free Shop had come under fire when it bagged the contracts to run the government's duty-free shops in Davao, Cebu, Laoag and Clark without a public bidding. The businessman was subsequently accused of smuggling fake Maling pork luncheon meat, Hope and Champion cigarettes, and Fundador brandy.

  The goateed Co also became known as the "chicken king" for shiploads of chicken that he supposedly imported from the United States duty-free then diverted to Metro Manila retail outlets.

  A resident of Paco, Manila, Co's family made a fortune from importing cheap glassware from Indonesia. Co himself controls RN Development Corp., which owns the majority shares of Fontana. He is also a director of exploration firm Alcorn Petroleum & Minerals Corp. (APMC).

  Co is associated with FVC Realty and Development Corp., which holds the title to Laarni Enriquez's residence at 771 Harvard St. in Wack-Wack, Mandaluyong. The property was formerly under the name of Jacinto Ng, another Estrada friend.

  Co once used Luneta as a helipad, to the chagrin of friends and park goers. He is also known for being formerly close to socialite Rosemarie 'Baby' Arenas.
  
  

• William Gatchalian, he of the Erap-like pompadour and moustache, is at present in trouble after business tycoon Lucio Tan, to whom he turned over control of Air Philippines Corp., discovered fictitious multimillion-peso purchases by the airline company.

  In February, he also closed Philippine International Airways Inc. (PhilAir), a firm he formed when he lost majority control of Air Philippines, and is in the process of disposing of the firm's 15 planes.

  During the Senate hearings, Singson described Gatchalian as among the President's gambling buddies, and among the most frequent losers "because he didn't really know how to play." Despite his recent streak of bad luck, Gatchalian is said to remain a frequent Malacañang visitor.

  Named presidential adviser on overseas Filipinos workers, Gatchalian built a fortune making plastic products, earning him the title "Plastics King." His plastics firm Wellex has expanded so rapidly—and especially since Estrada became president—that opposition congressman and former investment banker Oscar Moreno has identified it among the companies that have made a killing "largely because of their special ties with the President."

  Since 1998, Gatchalian has forayed into leisure-oriented businesses, buying up Waterfront Philippines Inc., which operates the Waterfront Mactan Casino Hotel and Waterfront Cebu City Hotel; Fort Ilocandia Hotel in Ilocos Norte; and Davao Insular Hotel (which ceased operations in November).

  He also has shares in Forum Pacific Inc., Philippine Estates Corp., Petrochemicals Corp. of Asia-Pacific, Plastic City Industrial Corp., Wellex Industrial Corp., Rexlon Industrial Corp., Kennex Corp., Pacific Plastic Corp., MPC Plastic Corp., International Polymer Corp., Recovery Development Corp., Pacific Rehouse Corp., Orient Pacific Corp., Philfoods Asia Inc., Sun-Star Manila Publishing, Forum Exploration Inc., Cophil Drilling, and Wellex Petroleum Corp.

  Once considered a fake Filipino, Gatchalian fought his controversial citizenship case before the courts for nearly 20 years. In the eighties, the Bureau of Internal Revenue accused his companies of failing to pay P87.2 million income, sale and compensating taxes. In addition, he allegedly owed Meralco P49.8 million arising from 88 tampering cases since 1981.
  
  

• Lucio Tan has been friends with the President since Estrada's days as San Juan mayor. Although the tobacco magnate did not appear on the official list of Estrada's campaign contributors in the 1998 elections, his brother, Harry, did. Nevertheless, Lucio Tan is said to have forked over P1.5 billion to Estrada's campaign kitty.

  In return, Estrada worked for Tan's election as president of the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry, a position Tan had coveted but had eluded him for 20 years.

  Born in 1934 to a struggling immigrant family in Naga, Tan worked his way through college, set up a business dealing with scrap in the late 1950s, and also found employment in a cigarette factory, where he was assigned to buy leaf tobacco in the Ilocos provinces. This was where Tan probably encountered the young congressman Ferdinand Marcos, says one of Tan's long-time associate.

  He formed Fortune Tobacco in the 1970s, which prospered with the generous incentives he obtained from Marcos's martial-law government. He has since branched out to other fields—banking, beer manufacturing, agriculture, realty, chemicals, travel, liquor, textiles, and hotel—and is considered the country's wealthiest man. Recently, he acquired Philippine National Bank and three public listed companies: Baguio Gold Holdings Corp., MacroAsia Corp., and Asian Pacific Equity Corp. (now renamed Tanduay Inc.).

  Tan was believed to have been one of Marcos's fronts. Marcos was believed to own in reality 60 percent of Shareholdings Inc., which owns shares of Fortune Tobacco, Asia Brewery, Allied Bank and Foremost Farms.

  In 1992, Tan acquired the beleaguered Philippine Airlines. Estrada threw his support behind PAL in its dispute with two Taiwan airlines that resulted in the cancellation of Manila's air agreement with Taipei. For keeping PAL afloat, Tan was hailed a "hero" by the President, to the consternation of airline workers who had filed labor cases against the firm.

  Estrada has also honored Tan as the among country's biggest taxpayers, despite a P27-billion tax evasion case against Tan's Fortune Tobacco Firm. Last September, the case was dismissed by the Court of Appeals after ruling that the government had filed the complaint 11 days late.

  But tough times may be ahead for Tan. In October, the government was compelled to resume the air agreement with Taiwan, on Taipei's terms, after the Taiwanese government halted the hiring of Filipino workers. A few weeks later, the Estrada government announced it would appeal to the Supreme Court to allow it to file the tax evasion case against the kapitan.

  Aides close to Tan say that Estrada broke the news about the government's decision to pursue the tax evasion case to the business tycoon himself. But Tan, they say, seems hardly perturbed. He is said to have told associates that he has survived three presidencies—two of them extremely hostile to him and his business—losing a lifeline to Malacañang would not exactly be a new experience.

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