ANGELES CITY – “It’s my own money.” Thus, said Peregrine Development International President and CEO Dennis Wright who vehemently denied making money from doing rehabilitation work in Eastern Visayas particularly Balangiga in Samar and Ormoc and Baybay in Leyte.
“I put in $145,000 out of my own pocket,” Wright said during a meeting with Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan inside the mayor’s office recently. “I came down there… $145,000 out of my pocket, out of our profit. I could have kept it but we divided it in dividends and gave it to everybody.
That is our profit,” Wright explained. “You can come down and audit what I just told you. I will open my books to show you,” he told the mayor. Wright said it was GGDC that failed to deliver its promise. “GGDC pledged $1 million but didn’t put one centavo in yet, not one,” he said.
Veterans’ group working for bells return
Wright said he went to Balangiga, Samar several times “because we are working on the (Balangiga) bells’ return.”
“We are working on the bells return not because of greed but because it’s the right thing to do. It is not for money or anything,” he stressed. Wright, a retired US Navy officer, said he got a veterans group working on getting the bells returned to Balangiga.
“I went to Cheyenne, Wyoming where two of the bells are and I went to South Korea where the third bell is. KGL did not pay for those trips. I paid for that myself because we were trying to build a relationship with Balangiga and we also have envisioned to create a Filipino-American war memorial in Balangiga.
It’s a bilateral national memorial,” Wright said. “So when Yolanda hit, we wanted to do something. My wife Rhea is from Makinhas, Baybay, Leyte. They had no food even if they were not hit bad and did not lose much because they are up in the mountain.
But they did not have power they did not have food,” he narrated.
Yolanda relief
“I bought eight tons of rice, but then we decided we’re going do more than that. We did relief efforts and picked Balangiga. We talked to the mayor who told us they had big problems, so we put together a convoy right here in Clark with about ten tons of rice, generators, reverse osmosis water filtration units.
We got the convoy down to Cebu then Cebu to Ormoc. One of our guys whose family is from Ormoc stopped there and gave foods and supplies. They went to Baybay, Leyte and dropped off some rice and charged cellphones.
And then they went to Balangiga. We put in two reverse osmosis water filtration units. We put in generators and charged cellphones and we went to the mayor and asked what needed to be done?" He continued, “and the mayor (Viscuso S.) De Lira said I need a city hall so I can govern because it was totally gone, damaged.
They needed a public market so they can get commerce going and they need help for schools. When we came back, we scoped all the work and bought all the materials and came down there.”
Wright calls Williams
“So I called up (GGDC President and CEO) Mark (Williams) because that was not enough. We got city hall and the market but not the church, the schools. I said ‘Mark, you opened your mouth on national media and you pledged $1 million, did you give any of it away yet?’ No, he said. I said ‘why don’t you piggy back on our effort, take credit for it’ because now were going to do it for GGLC because it is common we got Peregrine and GGDC in it.”
Sabah Al-Ahmed Global Gateways Logistics City (GGLC) is the 177-hectare project being jointly developed by Peregrine and GGDC inside the nearby Clark civil aviation complex where the almost done The Medical City-Clark is located.
GGDC puts in only $300
“Take credit for GGLC but not GGDC for my $145,000. Now you only got to put in $850,000. So he said: ‘Oh ok.’ So we now started rebuilding schools. We got one school building done, the second one had roof on it but it stopped and the third one doesn’t have a roof on it only hollow blocks because they pulled out the money.
They only put in $300,” Wright pointed out. “Now it’s one thing to sit there and lie to the media and it’s another thing to say ‘I’m gonna give a million dollars to build a commercial project’ and another thing to say you gonna give a million dollars to charity and not give any, but take credit for it. I’m generous that ought to rile you up. Wait a minute why are these guys lying?” Wright said.
Open books
Wright said he will open all his books just to prove his point. “Remember, the official books of GGDC for this project are in my office. Every centavo that went into this project went through my books every single thing. I will tell you to the penny how much money was spent here and not what they tell you in the media,” he said.
“You can come in and independently audit. We use KPMG, they use Ernst and Young SGV and they then have this company called BPO International, an SGV affiliate, audit our books 100 percent and every month they are certified and in six years they signed the annual financial statement associated to that project and I will show you Mark Williams signature on that project which says there is no fraud, no misrepresentation of facts,” he added.
“Now I will also show you every single month the audit reports in six years and not a single major finding, not one single major finding in six years is almost unheard of in terms of the accuracy and picture of the book,” Wright said.
