DOJ indicts Asiatique execs

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Justice (DOJ) has approved the criminal indictment of executives and officers of housing developer Globe Asiatique Realty Holdings Corp. (GA) in connection with its allegedly anomalous housing projects in Pampanga.

In a 50-page resolution, the DOJ task force on securities and business scam has found probable cause to file charges of syndicated estafa against GA president Delfin Lee, his son Dexter Lee, GA officers Christina Sagun and Cristina Salagan, and Pag-IBIG Fund (Home Development Mutual Fund) legal department employee Alex Alvarez.

Pag-IBIG and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) filed the complaint following a directive from Vice President and Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) chair Jejomar Binay to investigate reports of spurious borrowers in GA’s Xevera project in Mabalacat, Pampanga.  

Senior Deputy State Prosecutor Theodore Villanueva has recommended to the court not to allow the respondents to post bail.

The DOJ said there is ample basis in the allegation of Pag-IBIG Fund

and the NBI that Lee and the four others had conspired to secure at least P6.6 billion in housing loan

proceeds from buyers of their housing projects.

It stressed that all elements of syndicated estafa, including

existence of “false pretenses, fraudulent acts or means committed

prior to or simultaneously with the commission of fraud, upon which the offended party relied on,” are present in this case.

The DOJ junked the defense of Lee and the other respondents that they did not commit syndicated estafa when GA paid for the amortizations of some of the buyers that were unidentified in the complaint since it was provided in the Funding Commitment Agreement (FCA) with Pag-IBIG Fund.

Lee said there would have been fraud if funds were obtained without the houses being built or the houses that were built were worth much less than the take-out amount.

On the contrary, the company said it had already built the communities which have been occupied by borrowers when it got the funds from Pag-IBIG.

But the DOJ did not buy this excuse and instead sided with the complainants.

Among the basis cited by investigating prosecutors was Alvarez’s admission to the NBI that he received a monthly salary of P30,000 from GA “in exchange for notarizing its documents (regardless of number) without the need for the borrowers to personally appear before him as the documents are brought to him for such notarization in batches.”

The complaint filed by NBI and Pag-IBIG in October last year also named other respondents: Lerma Vitug, Tintin Fonclara, Geraldine Fonclara, Revelyn Reyes, Rod Macaspac, Marvin Arevalo, Joan Borbon, Christian Cruz, Rodolfo Malabanan, Nannet Haguiling and Hon Tungol, employees or agents of Globe Asiatique responsible for soliciting and paying off “special buyers” and/or creating “ghost borrowers.”

But the investigating prosecutor cleared them for lack of evidence.