No consuelo, no dinero
MARIA Ana Consuelo “Jamby” Madrigal may share the same name as that of her rich aunt, Consuelo “Chito” Madrigal, but the French-Spanish-speaking senator should have read the signs early on before firing off that letter last week raising indelicate questions about inheritance and her being left out of the her aunt’s will.
Despite her election to the Senate in 2004, the lone politician in the clan was not invited by her aunt to join her in the board of the Consuelo “Chito” Madrigal Foundation, preferring instead the company of Jamby’s elder sister, Susana Madrigal-Eduque.
Even in the clan’s real estate holding company, Susana Realty, it is sister Susana, Chu-Chu to friends, not Jamby, who was sitting in the board as co-chairman, along with Dona Chito.
According to sources close to the extended Madrigal family, Dona Chito’s last will and testament had already been known, if not actually distributed, to a few of the heirs, legatees, and devisees as early as September 2006, when Makati Regional Trial Court Judge Oscar Pimentel approved the petition to have the matriarch’s will probated.
Earlier, on June 7, 2006, to be exact, Judge Pimentel allowed the deposition-taking to be held in Dona Chito’s residence at 77 Cambridge Circle, North Forbes, in the presence of seven court personnel and witnesses.
In any case, according to the grapevine, the formal reading of the will was done on the ninth day after Dona Chito’s death on March 24.
After hearing some grumbling from Jamby’s side, Dona Chito’s merger-and-acquisition lawyer Perry Pe, who was also named the will’s executor and estate trustee along with BPI president Aurelio Montinola III, decided to call another meeting, this time inviting only the Madrigal relatives who were not named beneficiaries of the matriarch’s billions.