HK raid of law firm related to Piatco?

The law firm of Romulo Mabanta Buenaventura Sayoc de los Angeles is mad. A Philippine agency supposedly caused Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption to raid its offices in the financial island in search of evidence of money laundering. Documents were confiscated, so RMBSA cries breach of lawyer-client confidentiality and is threatening to sue for damages.

Among the papers taken by raiders on April 12 reportedly has to do with clients Piatco and Fraport AG, the partners behind the disputed NAIA Terminal-3 project. ICAC agents had secured a search-and-seizure warrant five days earlier. But RMBSA says the magistrate issued the order only for RMBSA Corporate Services Ltd., not for RMBSA Corp. that shares the same offices, staff and file cabinets.

The confiscated papers have been sealed pending appeal. They might include delicate matters that could put the lawyers in a bad light, especially if related to Piatco-Fraport.

Philippine investigators recently unearthed information that RMBSA Nominees Ltd. had set up two companies in the British Virgin Islands that allegedly were used for bribery. Piatco-Fraport "consultant" Alfonso Santos Liongson used Jetstream Pacific Ltd. and Mainland Global Ltd. to move $6.3 million from his Hong Kong Shanghai Bank accounts in Manila and Hong Kong to at least eight officials. The grease money was for signatures on favorable but illicit changes in Piatco-Fraport’s original contract.

Piatco and Fraport also moved funds from Deutsche Bank in Manila to Jetstream’s HSBC Account No. 485-6-605763 and Mainland Global’s HSBC Account No. 485-5-605764, both of which had Liongson as authorized signatory. On July 13, 2004 one Joseph Anthony M. Benedicto, supposedly an RMBSA partner, dissolved both companies.

The ICAC raid was conducted under the RP-HK mutual legal assistance pact. RMBSA contends that the government is only harassing its head, Ricardo Romulo, for calling for President Gloiria Arroyo’s resignation in July 2005. The investigation of Piatco-Fraport began in 2002, with both the Senate and the Supreme Court declaring anomalies. The firms allegedly bribed three administrations, first to steal the airport project in 1996, then to wangle contract changes in 1998-2001.

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Even in deceiving the press, it’s Follow the Leader at the MWSS on two dubious housing works inside La Mesa Dam watershed. This is evident in retorts to my piece that 1,411 employees got their 58-hectare idea from a prior 3.3-hectare executive site (Gotcha, 17 May 2006). MWSS head Orlando Honrade claims the employees fed me lies to expose the executive homes dangerously beside a filtration plant. Employee spokesman Isko Catibayan suggests I stop listening to "spin doctors" of the other side. Both reactions reveal more questionable items about their schemes, however.

Honrade says the 3.3-hectare work is not only for executives but also for the rank and file. The homes are not manors but bungalows as small as "36 or 44 sqm costing only P345,000-P390,000 per unit." The project received environment compliance certificate as far back as Nov. 1999. Site is below the dam and filtration plant, so discharges supposedly will not spoil the reservoir from which 14 million Greater Manilans draw water.

Then he discloses that the dwellings total 94, not only 54 as reported. More than that, he says the beneficiaries "used life-long savings or sold (pieces of) property or incurred substantial indebtedness to finance the construction of their houses... The housing site, which was sold to and is now owned by the MWSS Corporate Office Multi-Purpose Cooperative, was part of the titled property of the MWSS... Same with other housing projects that are even closer to the filtration."

Wow! Honrade has just admitted a seeming illegal sale of state assets. Worse, those assets are now being used as permanent homes, not temporary quarters, of MWSS managers and workers, inside the fenced perimeter of La Mesa reservoir, filtration and forest. Meaning, when they retire or if fired for cause, they can still live there. And since the homes and lots are theirs, they can sell those to outsiders, including mall builders or terrorists. Same with the nearby housing sites that Honrade divulged. The safety of Greater Manila’s water supply is now compromised by the very MWSS men tasked to protect it.

Question: did Congress approve such sale? If so, at how much?

Catibayan meanwhile claims the 58-hectare housing site for 1,411 workers is 2.4 kilometers from the reservoir and only 2 percent of La Mesa forest. Too, that the U.P. National Hydraulic Research Center suggested certain measures to avoid pollution, which the employees will obey. Lastly, that there is no substitute site in Antipolo City, since Barrio Boso-Boso is a watershed unlike La Mesa which "is not a watershed nor a protected area according to the DENR and repeated in the Senate hearing."

Catibayan’s home site seems to move with each press release; he once said it is two, then three, now 2.4 kms from the dam. The Hydraulic Center did suggest ways to flow flood waters and sewer pipes through Amparo Village, but its chief also concluded there is no way to prevent toxic heavy metal seepage from the homes into the reservoir. At the Senate hearing, authorities said they are awaiting to this day classification of La Mesa as a protected watershed. Meaning, government is too slow to comply with new environment laws, thus letting people take advantage of the delay.

That the area is so far only 2 percent of the forest highlights the risk of housing encroachment. Taken with the other earlier housing sites, how long will it be till more MWSS managers and staff demand similar benefits? Where will it all stop? Must the 378 other watersheds nationwide give way to housing? Will it be for the same MWSS giveaway of P5.50 per sqm to the 1,411 employees? And are those employees who won the housing 38 years ago, although at a site outside La Mesa, still alive?

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