THE Mandaue City Government raised an Annulment of Deed of Sale case Tuesday, Jan. 15, to reclaim the 3.5-hectare in Barangay Looc.
Mayor Luigi Quisumbing, Vice Mayor Carlo Fortuna and the City Legal Department went to the Mandaue City Hall of Justice to file the case.
Quisumbing said the sale of the 3.5-hectare lot to the E.C. Ouano Development and Management Corp. (Ecodemcor) is the biggest corruption done by the Mandaue City Government. The sale was done during the term of former mayor Jonas Cortes.
He said this is why he himself and Fortuna filed the case in court, to show how serious they are in running after those responsible.
The mayor said the City was gravely disadvantaged by the sale, which was pegged at P50 per square meter in 2015.
With the Annulment of Deed of Sale, the City hopes to get back the lot so it can use the P1 billion for President Rodrigo Duterte’s housing project, which was granted to Mandaue City.
Quisumbing earlier said the city lacked lots on which to build housing projects.
“We consider this as possibly the biggest and most corrupt deal in Mandaue City. It is important to us to be able to set this transaction right, so that we would be able to recover the property for the benefit of the future generations of Mandauehanon,” said Quisumbing.
He said there are still about five to six corruption cases to file. However, he refused to name the persons that are subject to the cases.
Fortuna, for his part, said the Council was partly to blame since it allowed the sale when it could have corrected the transaction.
He said he would still support the case even if it were another person to sit as mayor.
“When we pass the resolution authorizing the mayor (Quisumbing) to institute the necessary actions to recover the property, part of that is the filing of Annulment. This is to ensure that proper procedure will always be complied with because, first and foremost, we have governing laws on that. It’s very clear that disposal of (government) property shall be done through public bidding, and if the public bidding fails, that’s the time that there will be a negotiated sale. None of these requirements were complied with,” said Fortuna.
Earlier, Cortes’s camp said it is ready to face the case Quisumbing would file on the Barangay Looc lot.
Lawyer Jamaal Calipayan, Cortes’s chief of staff, said in an earlier interview that it is better that the case will be brought to the proper court so they can explain their side.
Cortes’s camp said it’s very clear that the move had been political, especially now that the May 2019 election is around the corner. Cortes and Quisumbing used to be on the same camp.
Cortes’s camp also cited Ecodemcor’s lot donation, saying Quisumbing should also consider the fact in the issue involving the lot.
However, Quisumbing said that even if Cortes’s camp insists in bringing up the deed of donation, it would still come out that the sale was disadvantageous to the city. And even if the donation was valid, he said, it is not part of their complaint. (From Fe Marie Dumaboc of SuperBalita Cebu)