Tsinoy trader dared: Show proof of farm ownership

MANILA, Philippines - Senate Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano said yesterday that there is no reason to believe that businessman Antonio Tiu is the real owner of the 150-hectare estate in Rosario, Batangas that has been attributed to Vice President Jejomar Binay unless Tiu can prove otherwise.

Cayetano told reporters that the explanations given by Tiu to back up his claim of ownership of the property were illogical and hard to believe.

“I’ve talked to many businessmen over the past two days and they all said that a lot of what Tiu said were absurd,” he added.

Cayetano said that there is no way that any businessman would purchase a property without undertaking due diligence, particularly to determine who is the real owner.

There is also no evidence to prove that the person who sold the property to Tiu, a certain Gregorio Laureano Jr., was capable of owning and even maintaining such a vast estate, the senator noted.

The 150-hectare property, dubbed by critics of the Vice President as “Hacienda Binay,” reportedly has a mansion with swimming pool, man-made lagoons, a kew garden, piggery, orchid farm, a mini zoo, mango plantation, horse stables, a hotel and other features.

“If Mr. Gregorio Laureano Jr. owns P450 million worth of property, it only means that he is a billionaire because just the maintenance alone, how could he have afforded that?” Cayetano pointed out.

“There’s no showing right now that Mr. Laureano is a businessman or is a billionaire,” he added.

The senator noted that it also does not make good business sense to accept a mere P11 million as down payment for a P450-million purchase. He also cited a report quoting Tiu as saying that he has spent P50 million on improvements for the property.

“He made an P11-million down payment, the title has not been delivered to him yet, then he spends five times what he has paid for already? What if it doesn’t really belong to Mr. Laureano? So he would end up throwing away the P50 million?” Cayetano pointed out.

Cayetano also said that the disclosures made by Tiu for his company to the Philippine Stock Exchange and the Securities and Exchange Commission did not reflect the P11 million that he had paid for the Batangas property.

“If Tiu is the real owner, all he has to do is to submit all the documents, the due diligence and titles. But so far, he has not. In fact, in the photographs that we have, between 2010 and before the scandal, the Binays continued to treat it as their personal playground,” the senator added.

According to Cayetano, his theory about the Batangas property is that when Binay won as vice president, he was aware that this would become an issue and so he attempted to fix this by talking to Tiu.

“Without Tiu, you have the original owners of the land saying that they sold directly to Binay. You have (former Makati City vice mayor Ernesto) Mercado saying that he was there. You have all the pictures throughout the decades of people invited by Binay and saying it is their farm. These are acts of ownership,” he said.

A Quezon City court, meanwhile, ordered Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV to answer the P5-million damage suit filed by Tiu, whom he accused of being a dummy of Binay.

The Regional Trial Court Branch 101, through its clerk of court lawyer Rommel Sumedca, sent yesterday the summons for Trillanes asking him to respond to the complaint.

The court gave the senator 15 days to answer the civil case.

“If you fail to answer within the time aforesaid, the plaintiff will take judgment against you by default and demand from this court the relief applied for in said complaint,” read the summons. – With Janvic Mateo