Extent of Villar’s Corruption

FRANKLY SPEAKING
by Frank Wenceslao

At the rate Manuel Villar is controlling the media with incredible spending for ads and buying off reporters, broadcasters and columnists in the Philippines and evidently in the U.S., one would wonder where his money is coming from and what’s he covering in his almost irrational pursuit of the presidency..

I don’t mind debating the issues but when people supporting Villar unleashed ad hominen attacks against me it’s when I draw the line. For instance, an LA-based Filipino pundit cast aspersion on my integrity and Pamusa and emailed Villar’s supporters in RP his beef my refusal to join an LA media organization he’s spearheaded is an evidence of my duplicity.

He didn’t realize joining an organization of people I don’t want to be associated with is my fundamental right.

I’ve been also informed some of my fellow members of the 365 Club that meet at the Intercon’s Coffee Shop in Makati are also critical of me. Their criticism, mocking really is based on First Gentleman Mike Arroyo coming and going to the States and watching Manny Pacquiao’s fights yet contrary to my earlier claims he isn’t bothered by the FBI or barred to come to the U.S. How does anyone know if he had voluntarily submitted to FBI questioning?

My critics don’t understand that Presidential Proclamation No. 7750 former President Bush issued in 2004 “denying entry to aliens to the U.S. involved or suspected of being involved in government corruption” was suspended for GMA, her husband and children when they came to the U.S. about the MOA on Ancestral Domain with the MILF which would’ve enabled the U.S. to have a military base in Mindanao.

It turned out the MOA-AD and military base were GMA’s ruses to amend the Constitution for the shift of government to the parliamentary system. U.S. officials saw through it and, modesty aside, Pamusa was one of the Filipino American organizations that pointed out the scam. Somewhere along the way the suspension of PP7750 for the Arroyos was never rescinded until President Obama took over.

I was also accused that our FilAm group is going all out for the Noy-Mar ticket. If I’m personally supporting the ticket my purpose is to prevent Villar’s election. It looks that his supporters in the media for personal aggrandizement ignore Villar will be worse than Marcos and GMA. It’s human nature that if anyone’s corrupt practices succeeded while just a member or Speaker of the House, then Senator or Senate President like Villar, it’s naive to think he won’t continue his nefarious acts when he becomes President.

Villar hasn’t a single quality better than Noynoy who’s 10 feet taller with regards to honesty. There’s one incontrovertible proof Noynoy will be honest and surely a better President to more effectively address graft and corruption through leadership by example than Villar.

Throughout Cory Aquino’s 6-year presidency, Noynoy wasn’t reported of getting involved in government deals or clearing shipments of what might’ve been contrabands through customs like Erap’s and GMA’s children. On this score alone, Noynoy will be a more trustworthy President than Villar.

It behooves me therefore to put in perspective Villar’s biggest criminal act that reaches a charge of plunder even without the C-5 extension project and the illegal conversion of a CARP-covered first-class irrigated rice land which is now the upscale Savannah Estate in Pavia, Iloilo.

The media hadn’t looked into the billions of pesos Villar and wife made under the Unified Home Lending Program through their defunct Capitol Development Bank by originating home mortgages for their real estate companies and selling these to the National Home Mortgage Finance Corp. (NHMFC). Later on when Capitol couldn’t easily sell the mortgages anymore because of stricter UHLP rules, the bank suffered serious liquidity crisis (or did it really?) and asked the Bangko Sentral for emergency loan of P1.5 billion.

Capitol’s eventual collapse and the transfer of its assets and liabilities to the Optimum Development Bank had raised a lot of questions until now the Villars must yet answer that the media seem to have swept under the rug. For instance, how much of the P1.5 billion BSP loan was transferred by Capitol to Optimum which assumed the former’s liabilities?

Capitol’s collaterals for the BSP loan were reconstituted titles of lands in Norzagaray, Bulacan claimed by the Dumagats as ancestral domain covered by their original certificate of title allegedly grabbed by the Puyats whose failed brickmaking project (Manila Brickworks) with the lands was mortgaged to Capitol. When the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis struck and caused more financial difficulties for the Villars it became an opportunity to collapse Capitol and organize Optimum which defaulted on the BSP loan.

In fact, securing the BSP loan with dubious land titles was a violation of the BSP charter compounded by Capitol’s assets not transferred to Optimum such as the balance of the P1.5 billion loan. On top of this, Villar and wife as members of Congress should’ve been criminally charged of plunder by not accounting for the P1.5 billion BSP loan.

Or, if they had an accounting record where the P1.5 billion loan went acknowledged by the BSP, this should be released to the media in the public and their own interest.

Moreover, former Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) sec-gen Tony Hidalgo will testify that Villar and CREBA colleagues would’ve have wiped out the fiduciary retirement funds the GSIS, SSS and Pag-IBIG had pooled for the UHLP had not the DOF and the 3 agencies reined in their funds and adopted stricter mortgage procedure that caused Villar’s real estate companies to suffer more financial difficulties in late 1990s.

CREBA led by Villar sued HUDCC to restore the NHMFC’s former loose conditions of buying mortgages and lost in court. This wasn’t what appeared in the media, which was probably Villar’s education how the media could help in the presidential campaign he must’ve contemplated then.

For being undercapitalized and due to overexpansion Villar’s real estate empire began hemorrhaging in late 1990s until he’s advised to consolidate the different corporations into one flagship company, Vista Land and Lifescapes Inc. Evidence suggests Vista Land had a turnaround because of the balance of P1.5 billion BSP loan the Villars allegedly put aside and the insertions in the national budget for several years Villar stands accused today to pay for 500% price increase of the right-of-ways for the C-5 extension based on future land values of Villar’s 23 subdivisions yet to be developed and traversed by the roadway.

Villar seems to have found Mike Velarde to take the fall for the C-5 fiasco. But Velarde is known to be corrupt himself. When I was with FVR’s Presidential Flagship Committee the head of Toll Regulatory Board asked my help to expose Velarde in the media and stop him asking poor landowners to make him their broker or grant him options to buy probable ROWs for proposed road construction and pressuring TRB to agree to his exorbitant pricing. As long as we have a religious leader like Velarde who should be in jail, graft and corruption can’t be minimized.

As a matter of legal principle, a corrupt witness like Velarde can’t absolve Villar who’s as corrupt if not worse than his witness. After all, the evidence adduced in the hearings of the Senate Committee of the Whole is sufficient to send Villar to jail, according to Johnny Ponce Enrile.

For direct comments fcwenceslao1034@gmail.com