HGC head ‘inherited’ P13-B losses

MANILA, Philippines - Home Guaranty Corp. (HGC) president Manuel Sanchez, after being charged with plunder and graft before the Office of the Ombudsman last week, denied yesterday any involvement in the losses incurred by the agency, supposedly amounting to P13 billion.

“Not under my watch,” he said in a statement sent to The STAR.

Appearing before the Kapihan sa Diamond Hotel news forum, Sanchez said the current HGC officials had no hand at all in the problems that the agency now faces as these happened between 1984 and 2009. He assumed his post at the HGC in 2010.

He said the current debts are the result of guarantees made by the government in failed housing projects through the sale of Asset Participation Certificates (APC) during the period.

Since the previous management of HGC could not pay the investors in the failed APC projects, the agency resorted to bond flotation in 2002, 2004 and 2006 that led to its P16-billion debt, he explained.

Sanchez said the foreclosed assets acquired by the agency, such as Smokey Mountain and Manila Harbor Center, Central Market at the Old Bilibid Compound in Manila, the National Government Center and the Commonwealth Market in Quezon City, all had legal problems and could not be sold so that the government could recover its investments.

When the current officials of HGC took office in September 2010, Sanchez said they immediately investigated the failed APC projects that had led to huge losses for the agency.

Lawyer Alan Paguia filed plunder and graft charges against Sanchez and former HGC president Gonzalo Benjamin Bongolan for alleged acts that resulted in “huge financial losses” by HGC, as evidenced by Commission on Audit reports from 2009 to 2011.