former PAGCOR Chairman Cristino “Bong” Naguiat. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/EDWIN BACASMAS
Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez on Tuesday said an allegedly anomalous P3.2-billion rental deal for a “ghost” property between state-owned Philippine Games and Amusement Corp. (Pagcor) and a private developer made it imperative to make plunder punishable by death.
“In response to the inquiry on what legislation should we propose, now, Mr. Chairman, with more reason that I will pursue that the offense of plunder be included in the death penalty,” Alvarez said midway through his aggressive questioning of the officials and businessmen involved in the deal.
Alvarez and House Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas took turns grilling the former Pagcor chair, Cristino Naguiat Jr., and executives of Vanderwood Management Corp., which in 2015 leased a 6,500-square-meter property to Pagcor for 15 years in a “build-to-suit” arrangement.
At certain points during the inquiry held by the House committee on good government, Alvarez told the resource persons they would be “put in jail” unless they told the truth.
Naguiat, along with 10 other Pagcor officials and Vanderwood owner Manuel Sy, is facing a plunder complaint filed by the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption in the Department of Justice on the strength of a Commission on Audit (COA) report, which found the deal “highly irregular and anomalous.”
The property in the lease contract is owned by the Manila government and is located within the Museo ng Maynila complex, formerly known as the Army Navy Club, a historic landmark at the edge of Manila Bay next to the US Embassy compound.
The city government leased the property to Oceanville Hotel and Spa Corp. in January 2014 for P300,000 a month. On the other hand, Oceanville subleased the property to Vanderwood for the same amount.
Under the deal, Pagcor agreed to pay Vanderwood P13 million a month for the lease of the building that Vanderwood was supposed to construct under the specifications set by the gaming agency.
In December 2015, an initial P234 million was paid by Pagcor to Vanderwood to represent six months advance and six months security deposit. Sy told the House panel that the facility was “90 percent complete” at present.
Alvarez wondered why Pagcor allowed such a deal when the property had not even been built yet.
“P13 million a month? You are basically renting air—the facility is not yet existing. You paid P13 million a month, you made government pay P13 million a month for a facility that is being rented only for P300,000 a month from the government also? Aren’t you creeped out by this?” he told Naguiat.
Naguiat explained the property “will be built within our specs.”
“They will convert the Army Navy Club into a five-star hotel,” he said. Sy said some of the specifications required by Pagcor included “chilled water, raised floors, CCTV, carpets and wallpapers.”
“We did this because the contract with Manila Pavilion was about to expire, which we were paying for P28 million a month as against P13 million a month” in the Vanderwood deal, Naguiat said. “We were looking at a cheaper rate.”