(The following are excerpts from a letter by Alexandra Lichauco-Smith addressed to Tony Lopez, editor-in-chief of BizNewsAsia. This is part of her effort to clear her name after she was erroneously mentioned by Rey Arcilla in his account of his travails with JP Morgan Chase Bank. We feel obliged to run this because we carried Mr. Arcilla’s article last Nov. 26, 2005.)
I first learned of this matter from friends who received the email of this article and subsequently from friends who read the article in your magazine.On being informed, I immediately wrote Mr. Arcilla on Dec. 4, 2006to inform him hat I had no knowledge whatsoever of those checks, never laid eyes on them and much less never received, encashed and benefited from them.
I asked Mr. Arcilla to publish my reaction letter for the obvious purpose of disabusing his readers of any impression, which his column might have created, that I benefited from the encashment of those checks. In brief, I felt it critically important to inform him and his readers that I was as much a victim of the wrong as he was.
Apparently mindful and appreciative of the damaging predicament into which his column had placed me, Mr. Arcilla responded with the promise to publish my reaction letter in its entirely in his next column on the matter.
I waited for good eighty days for his promised publication of my reaction letter. After a long wait, I wrote him on Feb. 21, 2006 inquiring about the matter. It was then – and only then – that he informed me that he had changed his mind about publishing my reaction letter. He proposed instead that I write JP Morgan Chase a letter of chastisement, provide him a copy of that letter which he would then publish.
I responded to his suggestion on Feb 27th and indicated that I thought his suggestion was inappropriate because J.P. Morgan Chase did not publish the article nor implicate me in this fraud, and I requested that he reconsider publishing my reaction letter in his next column.
Mr. Arcilla did not reply to my letter and after 15 days, I wrote him that because he chose to mention my name in his public recounting of the events that victimized him and then refusing to publish my reaction letter, I feel his article in effect maligns my reputation and my honor.
Mr. Arcilla, of course, had every right to make known to the world how his own bank supposedly victimized him. In fairness to him, he claimed in his column that he believed my name and address were fictitious – which assumption of course proved fatally wrong.
I informed him I was a real person with a legitimate address. (In fact, my family has maintained this residence for the past 40 years), and many of his readers must be presumed to know of my existence. Knowing that I am for real and not fictitious as he erroneously supposed, he should publish my reaction letter denying the adverse implications against my honor implicit in his published account of events.
To this day, Mr. Arcilla has not responded to my last letter dated March 25, 2006 and I have every reason to believe that he has no intention whatever of publishing my side of the dark story he recounted in his column.
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