MANILA - Lucio Tan, the Philippines' richest man, has won a legal battle with the government over control of a four-star Manila hotel, court officials said yesterday.

The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the China-born tycoon's 1985 purchase of a holding firm that controls the Century Park Sheraton Hotel was above board, dismissing a government charge that state funds were used in the transaction.

Tan's Sipalay Trading Corp had bought out the shareholdings of state-run Development Bank of the Philippines in Maranao Hotel Resort Corp, then worth P340.7 million ($6.55 million at the current exchange rate).

The sale was completed the year before a bloodless popular revolt that ended the 20-year regime of the late president Ferdinand Marcos.

The successor government later accused Tan of being a business front for Marcos.

The Presidential Commission on Good Government, a state agency tasked with going after the Marcos family's alleged ill-gotten wealth, filed graft charges against Tan and other Sipalay executives.

Tan, whose business empire includes property, aviation, tobacco and brewing, among others, denied that he illegally pressured the state bank's board to sell their Maranao shares to Sipalay.

The government ombudsman dismissed the graft complaint in 1997 in a ruling that the PCGG appealed to the Supreme Court.

"We hold that the Ombudsman committed no grave abuse of discretion in finding that there was no probable cause against private respondents to hold them liable for violation of the anti-graft law," the Supreme Court ruling read.*AFP

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