Senate probe on Pag-IBIG loan mess starts

The Senate committee on banks, financial institutions, and currencies will start Thursday an inquiry into the alleged use of Pag-IBIG funds for bogus home loans and questionable housing development projects, Sen. Serge Osmeña III said Monday. Osmeña, who heads the committee, said in a statement the inquiry will look into how property developer Globe Asiatique Realty Corp. was able to take out at least P6.6 billion in housing loan proceeds for buyers of its housing projects in Pampanga. Of 9,951 alleged Pag-IBIG borrowers in the Globe Asiatique deals, 1,000 could not be located, 400 denied applying for housing loans, and 200 had incomplete document for the transaction, the senator said. “We will look closely into the allegedly fraudulent financial arrangement between the Pag-IBIG Fund and Globe Asiatique and make sure that such arrangements are not repeated," Osmeña said in the statement. The inquiry will try to answer how the Pag-IBIG Fund charters as well as those of other government-owned and -controlled corporations involved in housing loans may be amended, according to the senator. “We need to enforce the protection of the deposits made by members of the Pag-IBIG Fund. Otherwise, they will bear the losses of scams or mismanagement," he said. Osmeña estimated 70 percent of losses incurred by the Social Security System, Government Service Insurance System, and Pag-IBIG in the Unified Home Lending Program in 1997 were “written off." He cited the 1992 Retirement and Separation Benefits System or RSBS scandal as a case in point in terms of mismanaged government money wherein the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ pension fund went bankrupt. Those invited to the inquiry are Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) chief and Vice President Jejomar Binay, former HUDCC head and former Vice President Noli de Castro, former Pag-IBIG president Rep. Romero Federico S. Quimbo, and current and former chairmen of the board of trustees of the housing fund, Osmeña said. Also invited to the hearing were Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima, Civil Service Commission chairman and member of the HDMF board of trustee Francisco Duque, Pag-IBIG officer-in-charge Emma Linda Faria, Pag-IBIG CEO Jaime Fabiaña and other officers, and Globe Asiatique chairman and president Delfin Lee. Faria earlier said that Pag-IBIG was in the process of blacklisting Globe Asiatique from taking part in housing projects. Binay likewise said that an HUDCC investigation into the fund mess is ongoing. —JE/VS, GMANews.TV