To verify, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) asked the Office of the City Treasurer to validate if the 14 Cebu City Tax Declarations recovered from a search done at the house of one Sandre Agravante Po, who was once employed in City Hall, were genuine.
More titles
“These are just the evidence we uncovered during the raid. We cannot assume that these are the only ones. We have to assume that there could have been others and that these have already been used in processing actual titles,” said lawyer Medardo de Lemos, NBI 7 chief.
The declarations were for four parcels of land in Barangay San Jose, all registered to a realty corporation, and another four parcels of land, also in the same barangay, all registered to a construction company.
Also found were declarations for four parcels of land in Barangay Buhisan registered to separate individuals.
The documents were obtained last May 31 when operatives arrested Po in the act of selling a forged Cebu City Tax Clearance Certificate, a tax declaration and two official receipts to an NBI undercover agent.
Search
After the bust that took place near Po’s residence on J. Alcantara St., operatives then produced a search warrant signed by Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Fortunato de Garcia Jr. and searched his home.
Also recovered during the raid were numerous government documents and government document application forms from the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Registry of Deeds.
Po was brought to the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas and charged with four counts of falsification of public documents by a government employee, violations of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act and the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials. (KNR)
