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What else needs to be shown to the Provincial Board to convince Capitol executives to reject and rescind the consummated sale of the Balili lots in Naga?
Perhaps it?s cash flow.
It's the burden of Atty. Romeo Balili, estate executor, to back up his sworn testimony that the P98.9 million paid for the land, a swamp of seawater and mangroves, is still largely intact in two Banco de Oro accounts.
If someone's scrambling to produce ?show money? to cover payments to partners in crime, that's his problem.
The Board is still waiting for Balili to produce a bank statement ? so they can be assured that a notice of refund won't bounce later.
If the lawyer is dragging his feet on an earlier demand letter to refund P38 million to the province of Cebu, what more the wait for returning over P80 million?
Get ready for a creative exercise in delay.
Even if gremlins had broken into the vault and chewed up the cash proceeds of Cebu's Most Amazing Land Deal, Capitol officials still have to undo this purchase, a shameless waste of taxpayers money.
In last week?s PB hearing, the top regional official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) confirmed what reported on Aug. 19: All that's left of 24.7 hectares purchased by Gov. Gwen Garcia last year is a fistful of dry land.
Less than 5 hectares can be validly titled, per CDN's early review of the inventory of lots.
One DENR official, comparing survey maps of the environment agency and the Capitol last week, said it looked even smaller, less than 3 hectares. PB Member Agnes Mapale was incredulous: ?You mean nothing more is left??
The rest of the land is classified as timberland, not open for titling. The spurious titles issued and accepted by the Capitol for the Naga City coastal land are vulnerable to being declared void by the court. It's just a matter of time for an action for nullification to be filed by the DENR.
If the land purchase is not a raw deal that deserves to be rescinded, and Governor Garcia stands by her position that she did no wrong in relying on the ?four corners of the title?, Cebu province would not be faulted if it just unloaded the Balili Estate beach lots on the next set of naïve buyers.
But justice demands that Cebuanos recover what was taken from them by fraud.
Recovering the money is basic, and may take time to collect.
What is non-negotiable is the betrayal of public trust in the transaction. For that, players in Baliligate will have to be uncovered and charged before the Ombudsman where the deal will be called by its real name: graft.
