John Alonte, president of Bacolod Real Estate Development Corporation (Bredco) clarified Tuesday that the reported property that is the subject of the report of the Commission on Audit (COA) has been a government property through the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) years ago and has been occupied by informal settlers.
"It's a huge area. It's part of the resettlement area and that concerned government agencies have been handling it. Bredco has nothing to do with it anymore," Alonte said.
He also said there were offers for Bredco to buy back the said property but it did not materialize.
COA has included in their 2017 annual audit report the 26,812.8-hectare (268.1-million square meter) Bredco property surrendered to the government by Antonio Martel and lawyer Simplicio Palanca which the PCGG has failed to proceed with the scheduled disposal of any real estate property recovered from the cronies of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 2017.
COA said nine properties were scheduled to be put up for public bidding from March to November 2017. But none of these plans pushed through.
Other properties are the 64,669 square-meter Independent Realty Corp. property in General Mariano Alvarez, Cavite, surrendered by Jose Campos; a 5,952 square-meter lot in Naga City recovered from Roberto Benedicto's Banahaw Broadcasting Corp.; a 2,335 square-meter lot in Francisco Evergreen Subdivision, Tagaytay City; a 1,000 square-meter property in Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro; and 300 square-meter lot in Calapan City, recovered from Jolly Bugarin; the 480 square-meter Kingswood property in Emerald Court Subdivision, Caloocan City; and two 300 square-meter lots in Pangarap Village, all surrendered by former Marcos aid, Alejo Ganut Jr.
Bacolod City Councilor Renecito Novero, who has been a lawyer of Bredco, clarified Tuesday, May 1, that the property involved is not that huge as reported but it's only about two to five hectares.
That's inaccurate and could be a typographical error, he added.
"If they refer the Bredco property in Barangay 35, that's wrong. It's part of Bredco's settlement with the Sandiganbayan. That was before when Bredco was sequestered. They sequestered Bredco because of the record, they noticed that Bredco got a loan from (DBP) Development Bank of the Philippines. So they treated it as behest loan because at that time, Martel family was close to Palanca and the Martel family has a family member who was married to the brother of then First Lady Imelda Marcos, that's why they considered it a behest loan," Novero explained.
He clarified that it was not a behest loan that amounted to P50 million which Bredco paid to DBP in the amount of P200 million when Henry Sy bought a property from Bredco.
There was a sequestration case with the Sandiganbayan, so for the smooth selling of the property to Sy, Bredco made a settlement and turned over that property located at Barangay 35 to the PCGG.
"It was a loan of Martel and not by Palanca. Bredco was not paid for that. Bredco paid DBP for the loan so that Bredco will be free from sequestration. The case was already dismissed by the Sandiganbayan in 1992," Novero pointed out. (Teresa D. Ellera)