MANILA - Sen. Jamby Madrigal on Tuesday accused Sen. Manuel Villar of being the “grandfather of Legacy scams” for allegedly robbing depositors of a bank his family used to own.

In the continuing hearing of the Senate committee on the whole, Sen. Madrigal compared Sen. Villar to businessman-turned-politician Celso de los Angeles who is facing criminal cases for allegedly siphoning his clients’ money in a ploy now known as the “Legacy scam.”

Madrigal said that the Villars orchestrated a grand modus operandi of using parcels of land bought at low prices as collaterals for millions worth of emergency loans availed by his previously-owned bank, Capitol Bank, from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

Villar’s camp, however, denied there was a scam since the loans with BSP have long been paid.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile also said the evidence presented by Madrigal will not be included in the ethics hearing on Villar since the latter was not yet a senator when the loan transactions were made.

The senate hearing is part of probes on Villar’s potential ethical lapses in the C-5 road extension, which Madrigal alleged to have benefitted Villar’s real estate companies.

BSP loans

Madrigal said that the Villar and his wife Las Pinas Rep. Cynthia bought the properties of Enrique Factor, Maria Rodriguez and Iluminada Rodriguez in 1995 for P11 million to P18 million through their holding companies Adelfa Properties, Link Holdings and Infra Holdings.

A day after their purchase, these lots were mortgaged to Capitol Bank, which released P281 million in loans 10 days after: P100 million for Factor property, P100 million for Maria’s property, and P81 million for Iluminada’s property. Capitol Bank later used the lots as collateral for a P3.5-billion loan from BSP.

The penalties for the loans increased, however, according to Madrigal, and in 1999, BSP issued a demand letter of payment for P4.5 billion.

Ernesto Francisco, Madrigal’s counsel, added that Capitol Bank issued three other promissory notes—worth P2 billion, P1.2 billion and P300 million—to BSP.

Francisco said Cynthia Villar signed the promissory notes.

The in-kind payment for the P1.2 billion loan was the disputed farmland of the Villars in Norzagaray, which was the subject of another complaint lodged at the ethics committee headed by Sen. Panfilo Lacson.

The ethics committee dropped the complaint, however, as the Office of the Ombudsman also dismissed a similar case filed against the Villars.
Francisco told Abs-cbnnews.com/Newsbreak that BSP has to clear the air on its inaction on the lots in question. “BSP should have asserted that it already owns the properties…Adelfa Properties and Golden Haven Memorial Park should not have been extended with road right-of-way payment then,” he said.

Loans paid

But Villar’s camp refuted Madrigal’s claims, adding that the issues she raised do not fall anymore under the jurisdiction of the Senate as these transpired when Manny was still a congressman and Cynthia, a private citizen.

Atty.Nalen Galang, Villar’s counsel, also denied that her client received compensation in any way for the properties mortgaged to BSP.

She showed copies of the cancelled certificates of land of Factor and Maria Iluminada, adding that the two – and not three lots – have already been sold to BSP.

She said that the properties did not also merit hundreds in millions of loans, debunking Madrigal’s accusations that the Villars grossly raised the value of the lands. “They were part of a pool of properties,” she explained.

She hastened to add that there was nothing amiss in Capitol Bank’s move to secure loans from the BSP, with the lots as collateral. “They were emergency loans. It is not unusual for banks to obtain emergency loans from BSP,” she said, as the loans were also sought following the Asian Financial Crisis.

Adel Tamano, a partymate at the Nacionalista Party, raised that under the rules of the Senate, parties could “voluntarily inhibit” in investigations at any signs of prejudice. He added that “it is an issue of delicadeza” not only for Madrigal, who announced her presidential ambitions, but also to other presidential wannabes in the Senate to excuse themselves from the proceedings.

Ocular inspection

The Senate will resume the adjudicatory hearing on Thursday, with officials from the DPWH, BSP and Land Registration Authority to be summoned.

They would also subpoena additional documents from the BSP and the Legislative Budget Research and Monitoring Office to determine if the previous budgets showed any pattern of increase in the funds for the realigned C-5 road extension project.

Lacson said that this is imperative as Villar served as chair of the financial committee since 2001.

After the testimonies, the Senate will conduct an ocular inspection of the Las Piñas-Parañaque link road, where Madrigal will identify properties which received smaller payments for the road right-of-way as compared to that received by Adelfa Properties, Golden Haven Memorial Park and Brittany Corp.