‘Delfin Lee only out for sympathy’

The camp of detained real estate developer Delfin Lee is using the Senate inquiry into transactions of the Binay family as a platform to elicit public sympathy.

Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-Ibig) president and chief executive officer Darlene Marie Berberabe made the remark as she said the charges against the chair of real estate company Globe Asiatique (GA) were not without basis.

“They can engage in doublespeak and propagate falsehoods, but the fact remains that, as found by the National Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice in separate investigations, Lee and GA committed a P7-billion crime against Pag-Ibig Fund and Pag-Ibig members,” Berberabe said in a statement.

Berberabe was reacting toan assertion by Lee’s camp that GA did not owe Pag-Ibig Fund billions of pesos.

Ghost members

“The context of my response in the Senate was that GA did not have a development loan. However, this does not mean that GA does not have a liability based on the fraud that it committed. What happened was that GA solicited and preapproved loan applications of individual Pag-Ibig members for the Xevera Bacolor and Mabalacat developments, and the P7 billion was released by Pag-Ibig to GA under retail loan accounts.

“However, it turned out upon audit that these ‘members’ were either ghost or nonexistent borrowers or members who were paid by Lee P5,000 to agree to be borrowers. This is the fraudulent scheme. Lee and GA induced the Fund to release about P7 billion of Pag-Ibig members’ money through the employment of fraud, and that is precisely the reason the trial court indicted him and four others for syndicated estafa, which landed him in jail,” Berberabe said.

Lee is facing a syndicated estafa charge for allegedly defrauding Pag-Ibig of P7 billion, and was a fugitive from justice until March last year, when he was arrested on outstanding warrants and a P2-million bounty offered by President Aquino.