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PEP SPECIAL REPORT (Part I): Beverly Hills 6750 admits to problems, but says it’s not closing down

PEP spent more than two hours with the key people of Beverly Hills 6750, managing director Dr. Eduardo Santos (left), general manager Suzette Lopez (right), and Dr. Abe Marinduque (not in photo) to discuss the major issues of their clinic and the man who started it all.

courtesy of www.bh6750.com

PEP SPECIAL REPORT (Part I): Beverly Hills 6750 admits to problems, but says it’s not closing down

Jo-Ann Maglipon and Karen Pagsolingan

Tuesday, February 26, 2008
03:36 PM

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Beverly Hills 6750, a local high-end aesthetic and cosmetic surgery clinic, has come under a cloud since December 2007.

First, there was the word war between the clinic's then president, David Bunevacz, and its group of investors, which ended in a media war plus charges and countercharges in court.

Then followed the exposé that the clinic, which was launched on the power of being the only affiliate outside the United States of America of the "famous Beverly Hills Surgical Institute," may have misrepresented itself because, in fact, there is no such U.S.-based Institute.

PEP (Philippine Entertainment Portal), which broke both stories, made several attempts to get Beverly Hills 6750's side, through email and phone calls, as early as December 2007.

The most pressing issue for the clinic was: Why did it sell itself as an affiliate of a non-existent U.S. surgical institute? Its entire marketing strategy, its media pronouncements, and even its own website harked to its connections with the Beverly Hills Surgical Institute, which was supposed to be "favored by the rich and famous in Hollywood."

Yet PEP's own investigation showed that the Institute had stopped being a big company in 1999, and had in fact totally closed down by early 2006. How did Beverly Hills 6750 explain the fact that when it was launched in the Philippines in late 2006, it was still laying claim to being an affiliate?

Click this LINK to read SPECIAL REPORT (PART I): Beverly Hills 6750's U.S. partner clinic no longer in operation.

Unfortunately, the clinic's management studiously evaded our repeated requests for either an interview or a statement, or both.

Click this LINK to read SPECIAL REPORT (PART II): Beverly Hills 6750's U.S. partner clinic no longer in operation.

Then on February 4, 2008, or more than two months after PEP began asking for an interview with Beverly Hills 6750, the clinic's general manager, Suzette Hahn-Lopez, called PEP. The message was that the clinic now wanted to talk.

Four days later, on February 8, PEP editor-in-chief Jo-Ann Maglipon and managing editor Karen Pagsolingan went to the Beverly Hills 6750 office in Ayala 6750, Makati City, to meet with the clinic's representatives: managing director Dr. Eduardo "Ed" Santos, cosmetic gynecologist Dr. Abe Marinduque, and general manager Suzette Hahn-Lopez.

In the three-hour interview, the clinic representatives admitted that they had indeed avoided all calls from PEP.

Dr. Santos, who used to be the clinic's medical director, also admitted that they had not been prepared to give a statement at the time. He said they felt ready to speak only after they had put together their legal case against David Bunevacz.

"You know, that's entertainment," Dr. Santos explained. "That's their [the couple David and Jessica Bunevacz] playing field. We don't want to be drawn into that playing field. And since we're a professional organization, we want to respond in a professional manner. And that professional manner is legal.

"Since we filed our first case [against the couple] about last week [February 1], that was the time we felt we can come out. Because our response is legal, and we're filing a second case on Monday [February 11]."

Then toward the latter part of the interview, Dr. Santos, who was at first formal and guarded, began to recall those "difficult" days with a little more color and detail. He said that when he read PEP's (January 7) letter to the clinic stating that its investigation revealed that the so-called Beverly Hills Surgical Institute did not have a valid address in Beverly Hills and did not have even a single telephone number in the entire United States, his reaction was:

"Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh! P----na! P----na! Sh*t! Sh*t!," he recalls saying. "And there was a patient at the next door who could be hearing me. That's how devastating this news to us was! The first time we received it, sabi ko, ‘What's this? Ano ba 'to?' We really did not know it. It caught us completely flatfooted."

Suzette Lopez, who was already the clinic's general manager at the time, also recalled how PEP's findings affected her: "This is my honest opinion. When you call me and tell me, you know, I don't wanna tell anything. I cannot say anything about David directly. So I denied anything about it. I don't want to say anything bad about David. I didn't know. As far as he was concerned, he was good a person, he was the president, he was the one who runs this company. I didn't know anything about the board, okay?

"So what will I tell you guys? I didn't even know what you were saying. So when I sat down with the board, I even asked them, ‘What are we dealing with here? I want it black and white. You show me proof. I am the manager here, I need to know.' Ay, ayun na yun.

"I couldn't also jump to any conclusion....And I am not just speaking about myself...all of us, all the doctors here, of course. Hindi naman basta sabihin nila, ‘Nanloloko si David,' maniniwala na kaagad kami. You know, we're all educated people in here, we have to see black and white. We need proofs."

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