TWO Lehman Brothers executives failed to show up during their arraignment for an anti-dummy case filed against them by restaurateur owner Vic-Vic Villavicencio.

Carlos Mañalac and Norman Macasaet were both no-shows last Tuesday before Mandaluyong Regional Trial Court Judge Edwin Sorongon, prompting the judge to issue an order requiring the two to explain within five days why warrants of arrest should not be issued against them.

According to the grapevine, only one of the accused, Edilberto Castañeda, appeared, and gave a plea of not guilty to the criminal complaint that he, along with Manalac and Macasaet, had allowed themselves to become dummies of the now failed US investment bank Lehman Brothers to own land in the Philippines.

The suit was initiated by Villavicencio, whose foreclosed Triple V assets were acquired by two Lehman vulture funds, after failing to agree with the Lehman executives on the buyback price.

Target: Topacio

The counsel of Cezar Mancao has found himself in the same fix as journalists and harbingers of bad news.

For quoting that his client had testified about having receiving an alleged order to “neutralize” estranged Estrada publicist Salvador Dacer, Ferdinand Topacio is understandably now in the cross-hairs of Joseph Estrada and Senator Panfilo Lacson.

Not many know that Topacio, whose more public and equally controversial clients include former Batangas Governor Armand Sanchez, Navotas fishing tycoon Lope Jimenez and former construction magnate Rodolfo Cuenca, is married to Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 42 Judge Dinnah C. Aguila-Topacio, the valedictorian of class 1995 of San Sebastian College of Law.

Topacio himself went to the law school across the street, University of the East, and had been drafted, after a brief stint with then Vice President Salvador Laurel, into government service under various capacities by now Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim.

Like Lacson, the Topacios, who are staunch members of the Inglesia ni Cristo, hail from Cavite.

Heard through the grapevine

Albay Governor Jose Salceda, who had been caught on camera describing Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the “luckiest b...h” before an economic forum in Ateneo, may have to genuflect again when he sees the President.

When asked Wednesday during a press conference in Malacañang, about the prospects of a “GMA forever” political scenario, the irrepresible analyst-turned-public servant blurted out, to cut off the impertinent journalist, “She’s gonna die eventually.”

(Web site: www.cocktales.ph; E-mail: cocktales_mst@pldtdsl.net)