Compromise signed to free Gen. Garcia?

Remember Eufemia P. Almeda? The 91-year-old widow has been begging since early 2009 for transfer of conjugal property to her name so she can sell these for hospital money. To this day, however, the Makati register of deeds (RD) continues to resist, citing all sorts of imagined documentary deficiencies. Due to this, the government is losing a potential P40 million in capital gains taxes that Almeda would pay when she is able to sell 24 condos.

The condos are among the buildings still in the name of Almeda and her late husband. She had paid P256 million in estate taxes, then secured a court ruling to inherit half of the real property, with the other half to their children. Drained of cash, she thought of selling her share of 24 condos in order to sustain her thrice-weekly dialysis and two-year hospital stay. To do this, she needed to have Makati RD Dorylene SB. Yara transfer her condos to her name alone. A certain Baby Caballero offered to fix everything on condition that Almeda give P1 million per condo under the table. The widow refused, and that’s when her troubles began.

In complaints to the Land Registration Authority (LRA) and the Ombudsman, Almeda cried that Yara kept imposing new documentary requirements. At one point Almeda was even accused of having tax deficiencies. When she asked the Bureau of Internal Revenue branch in Makati for a tax clearance, she was readily given one. But it was invalidated by deliberate erasures by revenue officer Florante de Castro, Yara’s friend. Almeda sued them both. Meanwhile, despite the estate court ruling, de Castro sent Almeda’s papers to the BIR legal office, where it began gathering dust. Yara’s husband is a BIR employee.

After a year of pressing for issuance of her rightful titles, Almeda stopped last April. She felt it futile to seek justice from the past regime. Yara was being coddled by her boss, LRA Administrator Benedicto Ulep, a protégé of then-First Gentleman Mike Arroyo. But buoyed by the new administration’s anticorruption program, Almeda renewed her claim. Last July she separately wrote Yara to list down once and for all the paper requirements, and Ulep to act on her complaint against Yara. She got no list and no action. In August she complained about Yara to Ulep’s replacement at the LRA, Eulalio Diaz. Again no action, not even a reply. She wrote new BIR chief Kim Henares about de Castro and the issuance of a new certificate without erasures. Almeda got no formal reply, although Henares’s office phoned her lawyer to assure that they’re looking into her case. Lastly she wrote Justice Sec. Leila de Lima, who assigned an NBI agent to investigate the shakedown. Almeda and one offspring were invited to file affidavits.

A new criminal investigation is under way. But Almeda still has no titles to the condos that she needs to sell fast to prolong her life.

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Tell us it’s not true, Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez. But murmurs are getting loud in your office that you surreptitiously have signed a settlement to free Major General Carlos Garcia. The deal is disadvantageous to the public interest. For, it would revert to the ownership of Garcia two condos in New York, a house in Ohio, and multimillion-dollar deposits in America. All this, in exchange for his return of some P50 million that he withdrew from various Philippine accounts when his plundering was exposed in October 2004.

Sources say that the Ombudsman had endorsed the compromise for the Sandiganbayan’s approval as far back as a year ago. The anti-graft court is trying Garcia for plunder and perjury. The government is also trying to forfeit from him P302 million in unexplained wealth, above his normal pay as Armed Forces comptroller.

The settlement is basically a plea bargain, sources add. Garcia would plead guilty to the lesser offense of indirect bribery. The crime carries a penalty of six years’ imprisonment, compared to plunder which merits life sentence. Since Garcia has been in jail since December 2004, while on trial for non-bailable plunder, he can have time spent in detention counted as served sentence. By yearend he can walk free.

The plea bargain would require Garcia to return the P50 million that he and two sons withdrew from various banks and Army savings in 2004. But it would erase all three Garcia sons and his wife from the plunder case. The family is enjoying their many pieces of real property in America, having fled in 2005 before being impleaded in the plunder rap.

Here’s the catch. Once relieved of the plunder case, US authorities will return to Garcia the sequestered condos and house. The US department of justice had taken hold of the units in 2007 on request of the Philippines. Per agreement, the US will turn these over to the government if the Garcias are convicted of plunder.

The house is on 625 Vancouver Drive, Westerville, Ohio; the two New York condos are on 222 East 34th Avenue and Trump Place, 502 Park Avenue.

Military sources say that Garcia bought and holds the posh Trump Place condo not for himself but “a principal.” They suspect that its return to the secret owner could be linked to the plea bargain. Garcia’s P302 million in excess wealth allegedly is not all his; he had merely fronted for some superiors.

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“Because the strong refuse to listen, therein is their weakness.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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