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[madatu]

Gamepal Inc (www.gamepal.com) opened their RP branch, Gamepal International Corporation (GIC) last August 2006. This is a gaming company wherein their employees get paid to play videogames for customers worldwide.

GIC has 5 board members who has equal share of stocks (1/5 each):
Eric Smith(foreigner) - President (co-owner of Gamepal Inc)
Lars Lien(foreigner) - Vice-president
Kristine Rodrigo(filipina) - Board Secretary/HR Manager
Michelle Marin(filipina) - Board Treasurer/Admin/Payroll Manager
Daisy Bongais(filipina) - Board Member

They hired roughly 200+ people. Now, during the first week of April, the president left for the US. He never returned and never sent the payroll money, thus leaving all the employees without salary for April 30th. The president was in charge of the money/profit since everything has to go through the US branch and the payroll bank account only has enough for half a month of salaries which was paid for the April 15th.

Because of this, the VP immediately announced a temporary suspension of operations due to losses. When the employees threatened to file a case, he also left the country. When the board secretary and treasurer found out about this, they went into hiding and no one was able to reach them. Even the company lawyer couldnt reach them.

The highest remaining officer, the Process Improvement Director, then found a way to force the President to send the April 30th salary. All employees were able to get that. Now, the director decided that the remaining company assets (computer equipment, etc) be sold so that the company can pay for the severance/backpay and salaries of the few remaining employees(who worked may 1-15 to properly facilitate the closure and get the financial records ready).

To do this though, the director needed the signatures of the board secretary and the help of the board treasurer since the GIC wasnt able to pay the building's rent/bills. And the building will not let them take the equipment out of the office until they were able to pay the bills.

Still, only the remaining board member (daisy) was cooperative but since she wasnt the board sec, they weren't able to do anything. The two other boardmembers still was very uncooperative and still didn't attend any meeting with the company lawyer.

They then heard that the employees are going to file a case against them at NLRC/Dole. The board secretary then texted employees saying that the backpay/severance is ready but they just don't want the director to handle it because they think that he is trying to keep money for himself and that they want to pay the building dues first BEFORE salaries/backpay. (The board treasurer is the broker and is a personal family friend of the building admin)

The director refuted this saying that everything he did in facilitating the closure is well documented and can be attested to by the accountant, assst HR manager, company lawyer and the remaining board member.

Because of this, we, together with that director and the remaining dept managers filed a case at NLRC. Our hearing will be on the last week of june. We have already filed for sevarance/backpay/unpaid salaries/moral damages/attorneys fees.

I'm asking, is there any other case that we can file against these 2 board members? Specially the Admin/Payroll Manager because it was shown i the financial records that she has a lot of unaccounted losses in the company funds. (e.g. no reciepts for 2,000pesos she got for supposed "gas money" without reciepts, etc) Cause those losses have amounted to 300,000 pesos.