Tang’s twister

Consistently, General Santos City in Mindanao attracted yearly investments of over P1 billion in the past few years as we reported earlier (Breaktime Oct. 9, 2014), and so the boomtown must face all sorts of problems from real estate syndicates.

For the past 30 years now everybody in the property business became vigilant over the authenticity of land titles. Everybody knew that the spread of spurious titles could only involve criminal syndicates with people in the government.

Recent reports noted that a big time businessman, Jimmy T. Tang, apparently tried to register more than 700 hectares of land at the airport area in GenSan. It turned out that the city register of deeds declared the land title that he presented to be as fake as a 25-peso bill.

Tang is the chair and president of the 70-year old electrical hardware retail institution called Avesco—yes, Avenue Electrical Supply Co. He is also a former president of the influential Philippine Chamber of the Commerce and Industry and sits in the board of the country’s biggest bank Banco de Oro.

It seems that Tang claimed that he bought 700 hectares of government land in GenSan, presenting titles to city hall covering five parcels of land at the airport. The city register of deeds subsequently informed him that the office could not transfer the land title to his name. City hall said the Land Registration Authority already declared the mother title of the Tang property as “spurious.”

As a matter of fact, the National Bureau of Investigation has been investigating the existence of the alleged fake title for years.

It turned out that the land titles for 700 hectares of land claimed by Tang virtually overlapped with the 750-hectare property that belonged to the government. This was also covered by a lease arrangement between the government, through the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)—called “integrated forest management agreement or Ifma—and a company of the Mindanao-based Alcantara group called Alsons Development and Investment Corp., or Aldevinco.

The Ifma between the DENR and Aldevinco dated all the way back to the early part of 1992, or during the term of Tita Cory, the mother of our dear leader Benigno Simeon, aka BS.

From what I gathered, even before the official Ifma, Aldevinco had been using the land to raise cattle since 1964. The company at that time had a pasture lease agreement with the government, which was part of the package in its deal with another company called Tuason Enterprises.

The twist in our story happened only last year. The personnel of Aldevinco received official word from the DENR that an alleged “original” title (under the name of Romeo Confesor, Excelsa Lauron, Palderico Confesor, Pedro de Ramos and Julita Confesor) existed, and it overlapped with the land covered by the Ifma between Aldevinco and the government.

Yet another surprise—the alleged “original” title actually covered the whole area of the Ifma!

According to various reports, authorities already established that the survey for the “original” title never appeared in the DENR records, although the property belonged to the government since the time of Moses.

The alleged “survey” purportedly took place in February 1950 and it even indicated that the runway of the GenSan airport was the “eastern” boundary of the property. The mother of all surprises—construction of the airport finished in 1993.

Well, either the surveyor could see far into the future or something was seriously wrong with the “original” title.

Even the LRA had no record of the titles under the names of the Confesor group, which to the LRA was already a clear indication that the “original” title was spurious, even prompting LRA to expunge it from LRA official records.

Undeterred, the Confesor group pressed their claim over the property by shopping for sympathetic government officials to back them up, and apparently even dealing the alleged “original” title to business people, who perhaps included the high profile Tang.

Tang might not have done the usual due-diligence in such a huge deal.

***

One could only wonder whether or not the past few years were propitious times for businessmen to venture into real estate. Aside from the GenSan case involving the famous Tang, somebody prominent in the Binondo business scene, we recently learned about the story of a certain Antonio Tiu, who insisted that he really bought the 350-hectare property in Rosario, Batangas, which was linked to the Senate investigation exclusively for Vice President Binay.

The property issue put Tiu in hot water. Three senators—out of 24—persisted that Tiu was lying, because according to their insistent claim, Tiu was the dummy of Binay.

On the other, government officials led by the ferocious chief of the Bureau of Internal Revenue were willing to believe Tiu. The BIR reportedly was already looking into tax payment “irregularities” in the land consolidation done by Tiu for the farm.

Really, which was which?

***

Now, for the good news to cell phone users—reports said the Court of Appeals had affirmed the agreement between Globe Telecom (Ayala group) and Bayan Telecommunication (Lopez group) for the “joint” use of the frequencies of Bayan.

We all know that Smart Telecom has been fighting the Globe-Bayan alliance by suing NTC, or the National Telecommunication Commission, to stop its hearings on the deal. NTC already approved the “joint” use of the Bayan frequencies along the 1800 MHz band, which Smart tried to stop in court.

But reports said the Special Former 12th Division of the Court of Appeals recently rejected the motion for consideration filed by Smart.

Actually, the Globe-Bayan alliance has been long delayed. The NTC approved the collaborative use of the Bayantel frequencies way back in 2012, since both Globe and Bayan started their upgrading program at that time.

Of course Smart, which was part of the monopolistic PLDT group, had to file a petition seeking to cancel the NTC approval, claiming that NTC abused its discretion.

No way, according to the CA! Well, in siding with the NTC, the court said the NTC did not act with “grave abuse of discretion,” precisely because the NTC required safeguards—i.e. terms and conditions—in its approval of the Globe-Bayan deal.

The CA ruling noted: “Smart has the burden of proof to show the joint use of frequencies is enjoined by law or against national interest.” It added: “In this Smart has miserably failed.”

In other words, the CA said that Smart could not prove that the deal was actually illegal. Well, the PLDT group had the same deal several years ago.