John Hay firm cries sabotage of operations

BAGUIO CITY—What’s the point of demanding payments from a developer when government has started the process of disrupting its sources of revenue?

This was the assertion of Alfredo Yñiguez, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Camp John Hay Development Corp. (CJHDevco), which is locked in a debt feud with the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA).

Yñiguez said the press statements and newspaper advertisements released recently by BCDA had “caused inconvenience and unnecessary panic among our investors, buyers and unit owners.”

BCDA had sued former and current CJHDevco officials for fraud in March at the Department of Justice, claiming that one of the three luxury log homes it turned over to the government as dacion en pago had been previously sold to another buyer. Dacion en pago is a procedure that allows a leaseholder to give back assets as payment for debt.

BCDA put out advertisements last week to ask CJHDevco’s clients to inform the government of any anomalies relating to their lease contracts covering properties in Camp John Hay.

But Arnel Paciano Casanova, BCDA president, said on Wednesday: “We are not attacking them (CJHDevco). We are just stating facts.”

At a news conference yesterday, Yñiguez said the BCDA press releases and advertisements had agitated the market, alarming some of CJHDevco’s clients.

He said the log home was indeed offered to a buyer who posted half of the property’s P40-million lease price as a deposit in 1999.

But the buyer, whom he did not name, did not pursue the transaction and canceled the deal in 2001 so the log home was transferred legally and unencumbered to BCDA, said Yñiguez.

The dacion en pago took place after BCDA and CJHDevco forged a third restructured lease agreement or the Restructuring Memorandum of Agreement (RMOA) of 2008.

CJHDevco rescinded the RMOA and asked the Philippine Dispute Resolution Center on Jan. 9 to settle the dispute owing to BCDA’s alleged breaches.

Yñiguez said CJH

Devco lost P11.6 billion in potential revenue between 2007 and 2011. Reckoning from a financial report issued last week, he said the firm should have earned P12.1 billion from development projects it could have started early had it not been delayed by changing government administrators with their own rules, as well as the global recession of 2007 and 2008.

Instead, CJHDevco earned P489 million from 2007 to 2011, he said.

Yñiguez said CJHDevco spent P2.5 billion to build a tourism estate inside the former American rest and recreation center.

In a statement, CJHDevco said the firm paid P1.44 billion in rent “despite the delay in the issuance of building and occupancy permits which ought to have supplied CJHDevco with the lifeblood to pay the very rentals in issue.”

“The claim of that CJHDevco does not want to pay rent doesn’t make sense. What developer would not want to operate? If we can’t get permits, we cannot develop. If we cannot develop, we cannot generate revenues. If we can’t generate the revenues, how can we have the means to pay the rentals?” the statement said, quoting Yñiguez. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon