Ex-Philsca president arrested

MANILA, Philippines - The dismissed president of the Philippine State College of Aeronautics (Philsca) tagged as responsible for the forging of an alleged grossly disadvantageous land swap deal, was arrested by Pasay City police operatives Monday at the Pasay Hall of Justice.

Enerico Sampang, who was ordered dismissed in May last year from his post by virtue of an order from the Office of the Ombudsman who had found him guilty of nepotism, was arrested by Pasay police operatives on a standing bench warrant of arrest issued by Pasay Regional Trial Court Branch 46 Judge Restituto Mangalindan Jr., at around 3 p.m. Monday.

Sampang was issued the arrest warrant in connection with the grave slander by deed case filed by the Philsca Non-Teaching Employees Association president Noel Navigar. He filed the case after he was slapped by Sampang when the latter tried to enter the Philsca campus despite his dismissal order and an order by the Philsca Board of Trustees not to give him entry into the campus.

Sampang allegedly signed an agreement with the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) in 2004, exchanging the Philsca’s 1.7-hectare campus along Andrews Avenue in Villamor, Pasay with a similar-sized property at the West Service Road of South Superhighway without proper land valuation assessment and without approval from the Philsca Board.

Philsca board trustees such as Gonzalo Duque, representative of Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II in the BOT as chairman of the Senate’s committee on education, recently told The STAR that a valuation of the 1.7-hectare land along Andrews Avenue placed it at P1.2 billion while the land swapped to it was only around P600 to 700 million. Worse, Duque said that a finding that the swapped land is flood-prone and is prone to ground shaking by the DENR’s Mines and Geosciences Bureau made the BCDA’s offered relocation site almost worthless.