According to two sources who spoke to the Inquirer, the manipulation of loan releases into accounts of fictitious borrowers was also likely made easier by the “relatively high stature of the suspected rogue banker in the country’s second-biggest financial institution.”
“Everyone knew that Mavic was an important person in the bank,” said a source who has dealt with the suspect, Maria Victoria Lopez, 54, a corporate services assistant vice president of Metrobank. “She had a fancy car, she had a bodyguard and she knew the [bank’s] owners.”
The second source said that due to her status within Metrobank’s Makati City head office, she could order the execution of transactions even without the benefit of complete documentation.
“People trusted her, or were afraid of saying ‘no’ to her when she gave an order,” the banker said.
“We understand that this URC account has been used for this activity since 2012,” he added, referring to the fictitious bank account opened in the name of the Gokongwei family-owned Universal Robina Corp.