Delfin Lee hopes SC will grant his plea

MANILA, Philippines - Delfin Lee is hopeful that the Supreme Court (SC) will grant his appeal for an oral argument on the P6.6-billion consolidated syndicated estafa cases against him and several others.

The Globe Asiatique (GA) president said he is ready to refute the charges against him before the SC, as well as the Senate should he be called before the committee on housing chaired by Sen. JV Ejercito.

“It will be a welcome development if the SC grants our request for oral argument,” he said.

“In that way, we will be able to show the magistrates and Filipino people as well that contrary to HDMF’s (Home Development Mutual Fund) claims, we have not defrauded the government and the Pag-IBIG Fund a single centavo.”

Rony Garay, counsel for Lee, said his client did not defraud the government of P6.6 billion.

“Our immediate concern is to present an honest, fair, truthful, and factual account of the events that led to our persecution, illegal arrest and unlawful detention,” he said.

Lee denied using fake borrowers to get money from Pag-IBIG, or engaging in “double sale” by selling housing units to multiple buyers.

He asked the SC to set the oral argument in all the consolidated appeals that the HDMF has filed.

“In all the nine appeals filed by HDMF and the Department of Justice now pending before the SC, at least 27 justices of the Court of Appeals and two regional trial court judges sided with us rendering judgments ranging from a declaration that HDMF breached its contracts with GA that resulted in all these fiasco, to a quashal of the information for syndicated estafa, recall and lifting of the warrants of arrest against me and my co-accused Christina Sagun and lawyer Alex Alvarez, and the dismissal of the syndicated estafa case against all of us for lack of probable cause,” he said.