The long road for Manny Villar

The ongoing inquiry of the Senate committee on the whole on the ethics complaint against Senator Manuel Villar Jr. has uncovered more controversy.

In September last year, Senator Panfilo Lacson had unearthed a P200-million insertion in the Republic Act 9498 or the General Appropriations Act of 2008 for the construction of the C-5 extension from South Luzon Expressway to Sucat Road.

By June, the Senate committee of the whole started hearing the ethics complaint filed against Villar in relation to the C-5 road extension. Senator Ma. Ana Consuelo 'Jamby' Madrigal accused Villar of utilizing his position as then Senate president to realign the project to benefit properties registered in the name of corporations that Villar and his family own and control. Madrigal cited the 35-hectare Golden Haven Memorial Park Inc. and the 50-hectare Adelfa Properties Inc.

Madrigal further claimed that of the P700 million allocation for the Las Piñas-Parañaque Link road, the Villar couple pocketed more than P136 million as payment of the government to the subdivisions that the Villars own.

Villar, consultant implicated

With the resumption of the on the ethics complaint against Villar, a Senate staff member pointed to a certain “Adriano” as the one who “dictated the additional P200-million proposal for the road construction project.”

Yolanda Doblon, director general of the Senate’s Legislative Budget and Research management Office, testified that she met with Villar and Adriano about the amendment in the 2008 national budget. According to Inquirer.net and GMA News.tv

Lacson identified Adriano as Anastacio Adriano Jr., senior vice president and general manager of Adelfa Properties Inc., a property development firm owned by Villar. Lacson said Adriano is also an official of another Villar firm—the Capitol Development Banks.

In a later hearing, Adriano admitted being the one who dictated the insertion to Doblon, the GMA News.tv reported.

Adriano said as a consultant to Villar, he was the one who studied the list of projects being requested from the office of the senator.

Adriano also admitted that he was the president, chief operating officer, senior vice president, general manager, and director of Adelfa when the meeting with Doblon took place. Adelfa has properties subjected to the road right of way and used by the government for the C-5 road project. The government paid Adelfa and other companies of Villar some P42 million for its eight properties affected by the road project. Adriano was even the signatory in the deeds of absolute sale of the said properties.

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Another scam?

Madrigal also exposed the alleged “grandfather of the Legacy scam.”

In a report by GMA News.tv, Madrigal accused Senator Manuel Villar and his wife, Las Piñas representative Cynthia Villar of buying lands at a low price and reaping windfalls by mortgaging them to their own bank.

During the Senate hearing on the ethics complaint against Villar, Madrigal said the couple profited a total of P281 million through the alleged modus operandi. She said that official documents show that the Villar-owned companies Adelfa Properties and Link Holdings bought a 37,788 square meter land from Enrique Factor for P11 million. Ten days after, the land was mortgaged by the two companies to the Villar-owned Capitol Development Bank for P100 million.

Madrigal added that the same Villar companies bought a 23,703 square meter land from Maria Rodriguez for P11.3 million, and mortgaged the same also for P100 million to Capitol Bank. A third transaction involved a 23,474 square meter land from Iluminada Rodriguez, which Adelfa and Link Holdings bought for P18.799 million and mortgaged for P81.5 million also to Capitol Bank. The senator did not mention the exact date of the transactions and the exact location of the lots, saying only that these were along the route of the C-5 extension project.

Inquirer.net reported that the Capitol Bank declared bankruptcy in 1999 and availed of a P3.5 billion loan from Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) using the lands as collateral.

But these lands, Madrigal said, were also sold by Villar’s corporations to the government when the C-5 construction passed through these properties.

Villar has denied the allegations. In an article by abs-cbnnews.com, Villar's counsel, Atty. Nalen Galang, said that that her client did not receive compensation in any way for the properties mortgaged to BSP, and that the properties did not also merit hundreds in millions of loans.

Manuela's woes

Not only did Villar acquire loans from the BSP; Manuela Corp., a company owned by the family of Villar’s wife, was granted a P1-billion loan by the Social Security System (SSS) and a P2 billion loan from Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), Senator Joker Arroyo had said in a report by Newsbreak.

Arroyo revealed this when he lost the race for speakership to Villar. Arroyo then said it was an indirect financial accommodation to Villar by the two government financing institutions. He noted that Manuela paid P150 million of the P3 billion loan to Capitol Bank, which used to be the banking arm of Villar’s property companies. A former top SSS official told Newsbreak that the loan proceeds were not released after word about it leaked out.

Nonetheless, Villar’s own companies were actively involved in how the loans of Manuela wer restructured. It was the chairman and president of C&P Homes who represented Manuela during the five-year negotiations with a consortium of banks for the restructuring of Manuela’s loans.

The same Newsbreak report also showed that previous court decisions favored Manuela over its creditors. Only the Supreme Court's First Division sided with Leca Corp. to whom

Manuela owed P194 million in unpaid rentals and penalty charges. The High Court said the rehabilitation plan approved by the lower courts violated obligations to contracts.

"Kangaroo court"

Villar has refused to attend the hearings, accusing the committee of the whole of being a a “kangaroo court” out to embarrass Villar and derail his presidential bid in the May 2010 elections.

Villar, who said he is running for president as the standard bearer of the Nacionalista Party, said that among those who voted for the resolution were his potential rivals in the 2010 polls, such as Senators Mar Roxas II, Loren Legarda, Francis Escudero and Richard Gordon.