Syndicate scouting for land titles to fake

Hot topic at the Land Registration Authority is the Supreme Court’s “Solomonic ruling” on the 34-hectare Manotok Compound in Quezon City. Located beside plush Ayala Heights and Capitol Golf and Country Club in Balara, the estate was reverted to the state last August. This was despite the series of unbroken titles dating back to the cession of friar lands in 1903 and the purchase by the Manotoks in 1932. Trouble begun only after a 1988 fire gutted the QC land records, as two parties filed counterclaims using doubted documents. The SC decision to return the land to the state after two decades of court battles, according to LRA men, could inspire land scams.

For one, a certain Diomedes Orbiso has found the nerve to apply for administrative reconstitution of another lot, also inside Hacienda de Piedad beside the Manotoks’. This, after the court already had twice rejected his maneuvers for judicial reconstitution. The LRA men believe that, from the timing, the applicant gained hope from after the SC nullified the title of the heirs of Severino Manotok.

Manotok had bought the property from the government 78 years ago, whereas Orbiso entered the picture only recently. Providently, the LRA sources say, obvious flaws expose the nature of and doom Orbiso’s application. Still the insiders worry. It’s just a matter of time for the long-entrenched land grab syndicate in LRA and the Land Management Bureau to come up with near perfect papers. Then the state and valid landowners will be cheated big time.

The sources say the gang includes active and retired officials of the two agencies, well versed in the intricacies of property transfer and list-up. It is constantly on the lookout for real estate vulnerable to administrative or judicial attack. Hot spots are jurisdictions where Registers of Deeds have been hit by fires. Among these are the provinces of Bulacan, Isabela, Camarines Sur, Pampanga, and Leyte, the town of Borongan in Eastern Samar, and Quezon City.

Residents of these locales who recently filed for administrative or judicial reconstitution of titles ought to know. They may just have started a long war for possession, and could lose even if they hold genuine documents. Upon application for reconstitution, they unwittingly provide the syndicate with the very bullet to use against them: a copy of the true title. That document contains vital details: names, dates, serial numbers, and technical descriptions. With such info, land-grabbers can manufacture papers to contest the genuine titles.

The LRA contacts say title forgery has become so lucrative that two officials of a Register of Deeds in north Luzon recently had an open dispute over the custody of judicial forms used in making land titles. Indeed, why quarrel over blank forms? The syndicate also has become adept at making authorities confuse the fakes for the genuine. The sources cite the Manotok Compound whose ownership was claimed by the Manahan couple from a 1913 purchase unsubstantiated by any title. Court documents showed that the Manahans submitted a Transfer Certificate of Title issued in 1979, when they filed a tax declaration in 1997 for the same property. The declaration referred to a lot in another subdivision in another barangay.

The LRA has a new administrator, lawyer Eulalio Diaz III. Old-timers say he inspires them for a return of decency in public service.

*   *   *

The press release claimed that 200 overseas Filipino workers had picketed the RP embassy in Athens. But photos showed only about 20. The pickets decried Ambassador Rigoberto Tiglao’s “expensive style of living”, including a “house with swimming pool in a posh village in the suburbs.” But records show that the house, pool-less, is five minutes from the embassy and the smallest among envoys’ homes, except that it’s adjacent to a huge garden, the owner’s, that the embassy borrows for special occasions. Tiglao supposedly only hobnobs with the Greek elite and neglects OFWs, like a Filipina at the national penitentiary since March this year. But the meetings with top Greek officials and businessmen were necessitated by Tiglao’s effort to convince them to open an embassy in Manila, which they did. And the woman happens to be the mom of his former staff driver, close to him, who specifically requested for no overt embassy action on advice of their lawyer. There were other allegations. But the example of three lies makes them unworthy of note.

Tiglao counters that the picket was organized by one Jose Valencia on instigation of Filipino businesswoman Imelda Goutas. Married to a big-time lawyer, Goutas owns a school for OFW children which the education ministry wants shut down because unlicensed both in Manila and Athens. Tiglao had told her that only the education department, not the embassy, could grant accreditation, which angered her as Greek officials are now closing in. Valencia is seeking political asylum in Greece, against the Marcos dictatorship that has been gone 24 long years. Tiglao says he also runs an unlicensed kindergarten.

*   *   *

“The commandments of God are nothing, if not an invitation to love, from love, for love.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

*   *   *

E-mail: [email protected]