CITY OF SAN FERNANDO?Personnel of the Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG Fund) have urged people who took out housing loans through Globe Asiatique Realty Holdings Corp. to report their status to the agency to determine if they are victims of irregularities.

The agency wants housing loan beneficiaries to disclose if they are classified as ?special? or ?true? buyers by Globe Asiatique.

That would more or less give investigators an idea of the extent of the irregularities committed under the Other Working Groups (OWG) program between Pag-IBIG and Globe Asiatique in the Xevera subdivisions in Bacolor and Mabalacat towns in Pampanga.

Pag-IBIG personnel here gave the suggestion on Tuesday after the Office of the Ombudsman formed a panel that will investigate the irregularities in the P6.55-billion housing loans Globe Asiatique facilitated for 8,973 borrowers from March 2008 to May 2010.

The agency?s board of trustees approved the OWG during its 248th regular board meeting on June 20, 2008, according to a copy of certification by lawyer Ruben Arcay, head of Pag-IBIG?s office of the corporate secretary.

A July 14, 2008, memorandum defined OWG as ?those individuals who have regular source of income but have no formal employer-employee relationship.?

Xevera townhouses sell for P635,000 to P750,000 each.

Loan documents showed that ?special buyers? are tricycle drivers, market vendors, students and practically anyone who consented to signing the Pag-IBIG member?s data form and notarized affidavit of income in exchange for as much as P5,000.

They were recruited by brokers so they could produce batches of applications. Most of the recruits have no capacity to pay loans.

?Globe Asiatique got special buyers for the 2,000 accounts under the OWG. This was done so the company can get the loan proceeds fast. [Pag-IBIG Fund] was its main source of money [for Xevera] because it has many other projects elsewhere,? said a Pag-IBIG Fund source, who asked not to be named due to lack of authority to speak on the issue.

The ?special buyers? are then replaced with ?real buyers? who discover that the brand new unit?s deed of assignment is still in the name of the former, setting off a complex process of documentation.

Globe Asiatique has 1,600 spurious accounts in the two Xevera projects, Emma Linda Faria, officer in charge of Pag-IBIG Fund, said in a television interview.

There could be more spurious accounts because Globe Asiatique surpassed its original target of 2,000 accounts, documents showed. Several validation reports showed that dummies turned up even up to March 2010.

Even the ?special buyers? were shortchanged as they did not get the full amount promised to them, according to another Inquirer source, a former Globe Asiatique broker.

The source said at least four Globe Asiatique personnel benefited from the arrangement as they kept P2,500 of the amount that should go to the ?special buyer.?

Documents showed that Globe Asiatique got the proceeds from the loans although the houses were incomplete or even nonexistent.

In a letter to 4,500 Pag-IBIG Fund employees on Sept. 2, Faria said the ?discovery of spurious housing accounts in the Xevera projects is an isolated incident, a result of failure to observe established internal policies.?

She said the agency?s system of control ?enabled us to uncover these questionable accounts.?

?The issue has nevertheless given us impetus to conduct regular audits of our housing program. We take this as an opportunity to improve our guidelines for our housing program and consequently the sustainability of the Fund,? Faria said.

She said it was not only Globe Asiatique that was under scrutiny but other developers as well.