Upshot.

(From BusinessWorld (Philippines))

Byline: Bernardo V. Lopez

This is an update on an earlier column on Piatco. There were five, not four, complex and subtle sets of amendments to the original contract of Piatco, the controversial winner of the NAIA Terminal 3 project, which the Senate report labelled as "grossly disadvantageous and onerous to the government."

Such amendments were in violation of the BOT law and a mockery of its bid process, which was why both the Senate and Malacanang voided the contract.

To understand the depth of the legal deception, even the Senate investigation saw only four sets of amendments. Before the Supreme Court case started, attorney Francis Lim of the ACCRA Law Office, counsel for the MIA-NAIA Association of Service Operators (MASO), said the invisible amendment was the first, the original concession agreement (OCA), which was a major deviation from the real original bid agreement, the draft concession agreement (DCA).

There was nothing original about the "original" agreement. Piatco succeeded in amending the DCA to the OCA, which the Senate did not see. …