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Yaranon gets realtor’s ire, takes back public land

Baguio land scam expose?

BAGUIO CITY (Sept. 29) — Baguio City Mayor Braulio D. Yaranon gained the ire of a realty corporation in his bid to take back the public domain when he likened an alleged land scam to the earlier cell phone scam, the Agrix and the Dimensional fraud. In what he called as an act of dishonesty and plain falsification of land titles, the mayor said this is plain land grabbing, which may come within the offense of plunder.

All these, the mayor said, had victimized a number of people, not only city residents but also those from the suburbs and some moneyed families from the lowlands.

Yaranon warned the public of the activities of realtor Prime Peak Properties Limited, Inc., which he claimed, has been selling parcels of land in the public domain to unsuspecting real estate buyers and investors at P3,000 per square meter. He cited three sites, namely Outlook Drive, Dontogan, and Pacdal, where, he said, the titles that Prime Peak holds expanded up to 300-folds.

Yaranon also branded a court order issued on July 23, 1996, confirming a transfer certificate of tile by Regional Trial Court Branch 60 here as a patent nullity. In a letter he sent to Solicitor General Alfredo L. Benipayo and Regional Registrar of Deeds Juanito K. Ampaguey on August 31, Yaranon asked administrative or judicial relief for the Register of Deeds to cancel the expanded titles. He also asked the disposition of lands covered by the falsified titles as relocation sites for informal settlers and for other public needs and uses.

Yaranon cited Original Certificate of Title (OCT)-0-128 covering a 10,300 square meter property in Dontogan. Yaranon alleged that the property was resurveyed at 511,556 square meters or 51.6 hectares and later subdivided into four smaller Transfer Certificates of Title (TCT). This allegedly involves the St. Thomas Village Project, which Prime Peak claimed as covered by a valid title.

Another property involves TCT # T-12826, with an alleged original area of 501 square meters in Pacdal, which Yaranon claims to have expanded to 155,795 square meters or 15.5795 hectares.

A third case is an originally surveyed property of 1000 square meters resurveyed to 4,482 square meters covered by TCT-T9463 and subdivided into two TCTs. Yaranon said this parcel of land in the Outlook Drive even expanded to include an area in nearby Itogon town in Benguet.

As this developed, Prime Peak president Lorenzo Aguilar dismissed Yaranon’s accusations as attempts to “blemish its efforts to level the playing field and bring world-class real estate development within reach”.

In a press statement, Aguilar defended the land titles covering the questioned properties citing a 1967 court decision granting the request to resurvey a parcel of land covered by TCT No. 11946 that had an area of 511,536 square meters. This coincided with the land area covered by OCT-0-128, which was allegedly expanded.

Aguilar accused the mayor of using the controversies involving the realty company to deflect his imminent recall and to obtain political mileage.

Meanwhile, the city’s urban poor in a land congress last month at the Maryknoll Sanctuary here deplored spurious land acquisitions through the Town site Sales Applications (TSA) by private moneyed individuals and real estate developers. Ornus, (Organisasyon dagiti Nakurapay nga Umili ti Syudad) in a press conference called for the review of the city charter which it said, offered Baguio’s prime lands to the elite and some foreign corporations. # Lyn V. Ramo for NORDIS

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