By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz
AN antigraft group has filed plunder and graft charges against incumbent and former executives of the erstwhile Public Estates Authority (PEA) for allegedly conspiring to defraud the government in the sale of a 4-hectare property at the reclamation area on Roxas Boulevard in Parañaque City in 1988 worth P41 billion for just P472 million.
In the complaint filed before the Ombudsman, the Crusaders against Graft and Corrupt Practices in the Philippines (CGCPP) alleged that the PEA defrauded the government and the Filipino people in “the biggest scam of [state] asset disposition.”
The PEA is now the Philippine Reclamation Authority.
Respondents in the plunder and graft complaint filed by CGCPP are the state-run company’s incumbent Chairman Roberto Muldong, incumbent General Manager Peter Anthony Abaya and incumbent members of its board of directors; former general manager Eduardo Zialcita, as well as the chairman and members of the PEA Board in 1988 when the sale was consummated; and the succeeding executives and board directors before the current set of officers.
The group also charged members of the Manila Bay Development Corp. (MBDC) board of directors and its president, George Chua.
The company have failed to turn the 4-hectare property into a business hub over the past 27 years, in violation of the original sale agreement requiring its development by the buyer within five years of its acquisition.
Lead convener of CGCPP lawyer Fernando Perito, citing Section 9 of the Anti-Plunder law—Republic Act 7080—empowering the State to recover unlawfully acquired public properties without any regard for prescription, laches or estoppel, urged the government to forfeit or take back this prime lot at what is now MBDC’s Central Business Park II along Roxas Boulevard in Parañaque City.
This is the second plunder and graft complaint against PEA and MBDC officials in connection with this P41-billion reclamation deal as the United Filipino Consumers and Commuters, led by its convenor Rodolfo Javellana Jr., recently filed a similar case before the Ombudsman.
Javellana said that this highly irregular deal between PEA and MBDC officers surfaced only last year when the Uniwide Sales Realty & Resources Corp., as part of its ongoing legal battle with MBDC, came with a newspaper advertisement appealing to PEA to take back this property.
Moreover, Perito said that at the prevailing market rate of P40,000 per square meter in 1988, the reclamation property totaling 410,467 sq m was easily worth P41 billion, but PEA surprisingly sold it for a mere P1,100 per sq m—or only P472,037,050—on condition that MBDC would develop it in five years’ time.
“What is outrageously detrimental to the Philippine government and to the Filipino People is that the Philippine government sold this property to MBDC only in the amount of P472,037,050 in exchange for a highly commercialized place originally intended to benefit the government in the form of tax revenues, but remained unfulfilled,” he said.
But MBDC has failed to develop the reclamation property up to now in violation of the terms of the 1988 sale agreement, Perito said.
He added that the former and current PEA executives are guilty of “gross inexcusable negligence and evident bad faith that warrant the filing of plunder and graft charges against them, for failing to cancel the contract, confiscate the property, and take punitive action against these erring PEA and MBDC officers for defrauding the state and the Filipino people of an estimated P41 billion.”
“As of this date, the only vertical structure found within the subject property is the Uniwide Mall,” Perito said, “and all other portions remain undeveloped, save for the construction of the Macapagal Boulevard, which somehow ate up portions of the subject property.”
Perito added that PEA officers from 1988 to the present “clearly exhibited gross inexcusable negligence and evident bad faith when they omitted to perform their obligation to enforce the rights of the government under the said Deed of Sale, thereby giving undue preference to MBDC to gain billions of pesos just by sitting on the property subject of the sale.”
“All the respondents seemingly joined together to commit one goal—to deprive billions of pesos at the expense of the Filipino People—(and) all contributed to what could be the biggest scam of asset disposition by the Philippine government” with a value of some P41 billion more or less if (the property is) sold between P80,000.00 and P100,000.00 per sqm,” he said.