MABALACAT CITY – Real estate developer Delfin Lee visited his controversial Xevera housing project here Monday amid a hero’s welcome from local officials, homeowners, and students after the Supreme Court downgraded his syndicated estafa case and allowed him to post bail.
The drum and bugle corps from a P100-million school built and donated by Lee to the government played a marching song as he arrived here as guest of Mayor Cris Garbo for the Monday flag ceremony.
Lee noted that he had named the school after his mother, while the school he also donated to the government at the Xevera project in Bacolor was named after his father.
“How can I dishonor my parents by committing anomalies in the Xevera housing projects with schools I named after them?” Lee asked in a press conference at the Mabalacat City hall, costing about P100 million, which he also built and donated to the local government.
Lee had also built at Xeveral here the Sanctuario de San Angelo church costing P80 million and donated this to the Archdiocese of San Fernando. He did the same with the San Miguel church In Xevera-Bacolor.
Last July, the Supreme Court downgraded Lee’s case to simple estafa as it upheld an earlier ruling of the Court of Appeals which noted that two other respondents in the case were already cleared by the courts. Syndicated estafa should have at least five respondents.
Lee had been in jail since March 2014 as a result of the unbailable syndicated estafa case. Last Thursday, he was freed after posting P120,000 bail for simple estafa.
Garbo, who invited Lee to the flag ceremony in front of the city hall, asked his constituents to pray for the resolution of the case facing Lee who is president of Globe Asiatique firm.
The mayor also had breakfast prepared for Lee and media members who covered Lee’s arrival.
Baseless
In his manifestation submitted to the Supreme Court, Lee debunked as baseless the claim of complainant Home Development Mutual Fund or Pag-IBIG Fund that Globe Asiatique had defrauded it of some P6.6 billion for the Xevera projects.
The complaint said this was committed through fictitious buyers and double sale of housing units.
“Yet, through the eight years since Xevera was opened, not a single resident complained of another person claiming to have bought the same unit,” Lee noted.
Since the Xevera controversy, Xevera residents were told to pay amortizations to Pag-IBIG instead of to Globe Asiatique.
Lee said he bore no rancor against Pag-IBIG officials. “Most of them are new and merely inherited the problem with Globe Asiatique,” he noted.
Lee said he was open to settling differences with Pag-IBIG for the sake of the thousands of Xevera residents in Mabalacat and Bacolor who, he noted, have become friends.
“It’s either we go on court battle for the next 10 years or settle differences out of court immediately for the sake of the residents,” he added.
Jail time
Lee also said that in his four and half years in the Pampanga provincial jail, he had befriended fellow inmates whom he organized into cooperative to manage a bakery that he also established.
“In jail, I also realized that Pres. Duterte has basis for his anti-drugs campaign. Ninety percent of the inmates at the Pampanga jail were drugs cases,” he also said.
Lee has insisted that he was not guilty even of simple estafa.
