LUCIO TAN will have no less than the full bench of the Supreme Court tomorrow to hear the taipan’s arguments as to why Terminal 3 should be awarded to his company being the original proponent after the Supreme Court voided the Piatco contract.

The taipan will not actually appear before the learned jurists, but his oral arguments will be advanced by former SEC Chairman Perfecto Yasay Jr.

The government will also be in attendance, in the person of Solicitor General Eduardo Nachura, who strangely has not taken a position on the ownership issue.

Tomorrow’s hearing, as well as the successful Piatco contract annulment case, was brought about by Ilocos Sur Rep. Quintin Baterina and lawyer Jose Bernas, who now insist that the unfinished Terminal 3 may not and need not be expropriated because it is already owned by the government by virtue of the Supreme Court’s voiding the Piatco contract.

According to the grapevine, Baterina will ask the Supreme Court to force Nachura to disclose the evidence of corruption and bribery that the Solicitor General accumulated and submitted to an international arbitration tribunal but has so far suppressed from the Philippine courts.

The Solicitor General has apparently collected evidence about Piatco remitting about $121 million through Hongkong and Philippine banks to different accounts, ostensibly to defray the costs of Terminal 3 but whose real purpose could not be accounted for by forensic accountants.

Even worse are the horror stories that have come out, like the use of retreaded tires for the terminal’s air bridges and the use of epoxy to patch up numerous cracks in the structural concrete.