Lee’s lawyer Rony Garay said that “apart from decisions of the Court of Appeals (CA) and Makati City regional trial court clearing Lee in the charges, the Home Mutual Development Fund (Pag-IBIG Fund) and Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) had also conceded that there was no such P6.6-billion loss or damage incurred by the government as earlier alleged.”
“The P6-billion housing scam is fabled and an outright lie. That’s why Lee’s continued detention in Pampanga jail is a clear case of injustice,” he said after filing an urgent motion for resolution of cases involving Lee and GA.
He said “this is the reason why we are pushing for the immediate resolution of his case before the Supreme Court questioning the Court of Appeals decisions that dismissed his syndicated estafa case and quashed the arrest order issued by the trial court against our client.”
Pag-IBIG Fund had alleged that it suffered damage in the amount of P6.6 billion in loans taken by GA, but Garay said that “such claim is an outright lie as clearly shown not only by HDMF’s own documents, but by its officers’ express pronouncements.”
He recalled that “HDMF President and CEO Darlene Berberabe admitted during a Senate Blue Ribbon Sub-Committee hearing on April 13, 2015 that Lee did not obtain any P6.6 billion loan from petitioner Pag- IBIG Fund.”
“On the contrary, it is Globe Asiatique, as further admitted by Berberabe, that has receivables of P600 million from petitioner HDMF, more than sufficient to pay off or cover the alleged P18 million claim of the 28 other complainants of petitioner HDMF, ” he noted.
Garay also said the HDMF has never filed any case directly involving the alleged P6.6-billion anomaly.
Despite the claim allegedly involving P6.6 billion, the HDMF’s counterclaim was ironically only for P12 million and the agency is now barred from increasing the amount in any proceedings, he noted.
“The Office of the Solicitor General had also confirmed this admission of Pag-IBIG on March 19, 2013 in the petition for certiorari in CA GR SP No. 127553, that there is no such thing as P6.6 billion damage to petitioner HDMF,” he added.
“This is also the reason why after more than six years, respondents (Lee) and Globe Asiatique have not received to date any demand letter or summons in any pending civil case, for the payment of this fabled P6.6 billion damage allegedly”, Garay stressed.
He also said that besides, “there can be no damage on the part of petitioner HDMF for P6.6 billion because it is fully secured by the collateral town house units at the Xevera Bacolor and Mabalacat Township Projects.”
Garay said the P6.6-billion damage claim was “simply a media hype.”
“With such retraction in the P6.6-billion damage claim, Lee’s camp said the SC should now dismiss the petitions of HMDF and Department of Justice justifying the syndicated estafa case filed against the GA executives before Pampanga regional trial court,” he stressed.
Garay urged the High Court to uphold the earlier rulings of the CA ad Makati RTC clearing Lee in the case.
“All these baseless and misplaced allegations of petitioner HDMF were already debunked by the RTC-Branch 58 of Makati City in Civil Case No. 10-1120 in the Resolution dated Jan. 30, 2012 containing the final summary judgment in that case,” he stressed. He pointed out that “this summary judgment of the Makati RTC had been affirmed by the CA in a case denominated as CA GR SP No. 128262 and the ruling had become final and executory.”
The trial court’s summary judgment “practically invalidated the factual findings in the Review Resolution of the DOJ” that led to the filing of the syndicated estafa case, Garay said. The court held that GA “did not commit any breach of warranty, and instead it is petitioner HDMF which is guilty of breach of contract” and “did not approve the Pag- IBIG housing loan applications of the claimed fictitious buyers/borrowers of HDMF because as per MOA, it is limited to loan counseling.”
“This is why we were surprised when Judge Amifaith Fider-Reyes of RTC Branch 42 of San Fernando upheld the indictment when she could not even state the amount of damage allegedly sustained by HDMF,” he noted.
Garay also debunked allegations of double sale and ghost projects, noting that of some 10,000 buyers of Bacolor and Mabalacat township projects in Pampanga, only 27 individuals filed cases against Globe Asiatique and most of the complainants were “delinquent ones who took advantage of the issue against Lee to skirt paying dues.”
“Until today these 27 complainants are living in their respective housing units and no one has claimed ownership of their houses as they continue to enjoy their abode without paying any single centavo over the past five years,” Garay added.
