US assets not included in SALn makes her liable for graft, perjury
Re-electionist Sen. Loren Legarda was one of 20 senators
who had voted to convict impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona for not
declaring his dollar accounts as well as his properties where he failed
to state the acquisition cost in his Statement of Assets and Liabilities
and net worth (SALn).
However, it appears, from photos and documents obtained by the
Tribune yesterday that Legarda herself has not declared her condominium
asset in Manhattan, New York City.
This has led Louis “Barok”
Biraogo, a declared public interest advocate that Legarda may be as
“guilty” as the impeached Chief Justice in not declaring all of her
properties in her SALn.
Biraogo stated emphatically that: “I have all
the documentary evidence. I have the smoking gun needed to prove that
Legarda does not deserve to stay a minute longer as a senator of the
land.”
He stressed that “Legarda should be ashamed to even be
campaigning on the same stage as President Aquino under his
daang-matuwid (straight path) platform.”
Biraogo claimed that Legarda
has been concealing for five years her purchase on May 9, 2006 of a
posh condominium unit in New York City. He bared that Legarda had paid
in full and in cash the princely price of $700,000 or about P36 million
in the exchange rate prevailing in 2006 to acquire the condo unit at #77
Park Avenue, which is a very expensive area in New York where the
Rockefellers and Trumps also have properties.
For Legarda to have the ready cash of $700,000 or close to three
quarters of a million dollars, it was also asked by others whether she
had declared her dollar account in her SALns.
A Youtube video has
been making the rounds of her posh condo and the many documents
attesting to her ownership of the Manhattan condo, as well as copies of
her SALns, where her acquisitions and her total assets failed to reflect
either her condominium or her correct total assets.
Even her home in
Urdaneta Village was not listed as part of her assets, even when it
belongs to her, as she listed this down as a corporation known as Loren
Legarda and Associates, where her relatives own one share each while she
owns the rest.
Armed with Legarda’s SALns which the senator
challenged anyone to secure as they are “public record,” Biraogo pointed
out that Legarda hid from public scrutiny the condo unit she bought in
2006 by not declaring it in her SALns covering the years 2007 up to
2010.
“Lo and behold! It was only in her 2011 SALn that Legarda
declared for the very first time her ownership of a property in America
which she claimed she had acquired for P27,800,000. Let’s not forget
that she filed her 2011 SALn at about the time when the impeachment
trial of Corona was already at fever pitch,” said Biraogo.
Deathly afraid?
“What made Legarda declare a US property in her
2011 SALN? Was it because she became very, very afraid that she would be
in the same boat as Corona – that her hidden condo unit at #77 Park
Avenue would be found? Well, as it turns out, she has every reason to be
deathly afraid,” said Biraogo.
Whether or not the US property
referred to by Legarda in her 2011 SALn is the same as the one at #77
Park Avenue, Biraogo said Legarda, “like Corona before her, is already
damaged goods” because the late declaration would not absolve her of
what he calls the wrongdoing.
“She should consider withdrawing from
the May elections because she will face removal like what happened to
Corona. Despite her self-righteous stance during the trial of Corona,
Legarda has every reason to be afraid, more afraid now that the truth
has finally come out on her US property,” said Biraogo.
“What do we
have in Senator Legarda now, a veritable Lady Corona? Well, I suggest
she hire a good lawyer because she may be facing plunder raps and
multiple counts of money laundering, as well as graft and corruption and
perjury charges. She has to explain where she got the money to buy such
an expensive property,” said Biraogo.
“Legarda’s declaration of a US
property in her 2011 SALn was a pathetic attempt at cover-up because
she, as a senator, should know better than most that the SALn law is
very specific on the details that a SALn filer must input on the SALn
form,” said Biraogo.
“With Legarda leaving blank in the SALn form the
details that would have identified the location of that unspecified US
property, as well as its current fair market value or if improvements
had been done on it, she might as well have not declared it all.”
Huge increases
The pertinent laws governing SALns are strict that
public officials must detail all of their assets and liabilities,
including the acquisition and fair market value and the addresses of
real properties, as well as their investments and bank deposits.
Biraogo
noted the huge increase in Legarda’s net worth – from P45,545,565 in
2010 to P68,553,755 in 2011 ; and the big increase in her cash on hand
in banks — from P180,000 in 2010 to P7,963,190 in 2011.
He stressed
that huge increases in the net worth of public officials, if unsupported
by commensurate sources of income, are automatically deemed to be
ill-gotten wealth.
“Legarda paid $700,000 in 2006 for the unit at #77
Park Avenue or P35,980,000 at the exchange rate of P51.40-$1 at the
time. If that’s the same unit referred to by Legarda in her 2011 SALn,
then she undervalued it by claiming the acquisition cost to be just
P27,800,000” said Biraogo.
“Using the peso-exchange rate in 2011
instead of the prevailing rate in 2006 may be another clue that Legarda
was already frazzled, dazed and confused even, when she declared that
acquisition cost of P27,800,000.”
Biraogo said that if Legarda admits
that the unit at #77 Park Avenue was what was being referred to in her
2011 SALn, then the harder question for her to answer would be why was
the property she bought in 2006 declared only in her 2011 SALn?”
Legarda
and the majority of the senators last year ousted Corona from the
Supreme Court after finding him guilty of mis- and non-declarations in
his SALns of assets, including ownership of several condo units.
Same yardstick
Biraogo said that Legarda should suffer the same
fate as Corona, adding that “sauce for the goose should also be sauce
for the gander. “
“Senator Legarda should be measured with the same
yardstick she used in convicting Corona for being untruthful in his
SALn,” said Biraogo, who said he got interested in digging deep into
Legarda’s SALn and properties when he learned that their alma mater, the
University of the Philippines, would be honoring her as a top alumna.
Biraogo
has figured in many national issues and celebrated court cases,
starting in his sophomore law student year in UP Diliman when he sued
then UP president Edgardo Angara all the way to the Supreme Court for
increasing UP’s tuition and other fees by 350 percent.
In 1985,
Biraogo challenged before the SC the constitutionality of the snap
presidential election which triggered the 1986 People Power Revolt. He
also contested in court the customs duties slapped on imported reading
materials, pressuring then President Gloria Arroyo into ordering then
Finance Secretary Margarito Teves to honor the Philippines’ being a
signatory of Florence Treaty forbidding the slapping of customs duties
on reading materials.
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