The Ghosts of Franklin's Past

So apparently Drilon's stepdaughter sold the North Forbes Park mansion in 2009. She purchased it for 50 million at a time when her income could not possibly justify such an acquisition then later resold it for Php 98 million. So if this was not altogether a case of acquiring a property using possibly ill-gotten wealth, it later evolved into a case of money laundering.

In short, kumita nang bongga ito si Porky Pig gamit ang kanyang dummy na stepdaughter. Magaling din ang diskarte ng mamang ito.

Still it begs to be properly investigated. How was it acquired and where did Genuino get the money to purchase this property back in 2004? Php 50 million is a big amount of money for a young single individual even if she had a high paying income as an executive of the Tantocos.

Drilon of course will continue to deny it was his. Pitpitin mo kaya yung dummy, tingnan natin kung anong mangyari?

Here's the complete 2012 article from columnist Jojo Robles:

17 KAWAYAN ROAD Lowdown - Jojo Robles Manila Standard Today Posted May 25th, 2012

Senator Franklin Drilon, the prime mover of President Noynoy Aquino’s campaign to remove Chief Justice Renato Corona in the Senate, has refused to sign a waiver that will allow investigations into his bank account. Drilon told a television interviewer that he could not accept Corona’s challenge because of the damage these investigations would do to the banking system.

I suspect that politicians like Drilon and the 188 congressmen who signed the impeachment complaint against Corona in the House of Representatives have a lot of money hidden in local banks, safely protected by the laws that uphold the secrecy of bank deposits. But I didn’t know that if all that money was discovered, the banking system would collapse.

As far as Drilon himself is concerned, he has been linked not to bank accounts but to the purchase and sale of land inside ultra-posh North Forbes Park in Makati City, which was once owned by his step-daughter, Maria Eduarda S. Genuino. If the authorities truly wanted to look into the wealth of Drilon, the property at 17 Kawayan Road, North Forbes, would open a Pandora’s Box of questions for the senator, if they were only half as industrious as they were when they investigated Corona.

At prevailing prices of around P100,000 per square meter in Forbes Park these days, the property in question would be worth P154.2 million just for the land. And how, as the anti-Corona commentators would say, could someone who worked most of his adult life in government be able to afford land like that just to build a house on?

Here’s how the paper trail went in the strange case of the Forbes Park mansion: The 1,542-square meter property was originally registered to Amalia Mata Montecillo and her husband Manuel, covered by Transfer Certificate of Title no. 95557, in 1962.

In a series of mortgages, the property went through Philippine American Life Insurance Co. (1964), Philippine Veterans Bank (1974), Philippine Trust Co. (1988) and, eventually, Bank of the Philippine Islands. The lot, by then covered by TCT 319410 in the Makati Register of Deeds, was sold by BPI to Genuino in 2004 for P50 million.

* * *

Who is Eduarda Genuino? She is the senator’s stepdaughter by his second marriage to the widow Milagros Serrano Genuino; Drilon married Genuino, his Greenhills, San Juan neighbor, shortly after his first wife, Violy, died.

Genuino, in the 2004 deed of sale with BPI covering the Forbes property, listed as her address the house of Drilon at 49 Polk Street, North Greenhills, San Juan. By then, the Genuino family had already moved to the senator’s house; Eduarda listed her civil status as “single.”

Eduarda Genuino is reportedly a friend of one of the members of the rich Tantoco family and that friendship has landed her an executive position in the company that locally owns and operates the Starbucks coffee chain. But did that job pay enough to be able to purchase a Forbes house for P50 million?

People who know the Genuino couple, Milagros and her late husband Vic, are aware that they “dabbled” in real estate, according to one source. But their earnings in that trade still did not make them wealthy enough to live in Forbes — or even to hold property there for speculation in the name of their single daughter for five years.

But that is what happened, according to the paper trail. On June 10, 2009, Eduarda Genuino sold the 17 Kawayan place for P98 million to a company calling itself Triple 8 Enterprises & Trading Corp. The sale, representing an almost 100 percent increase in value from the BPI purchase, authorized Triple 8 president Wilson V. Ko in a secretary’s certificate to buy the property from Drilon’s step-daughter.

A columnist, Louie Logarta, got wind of the sale and wrote an item about it in the Tribune last year, citing as his basis “a two-page document which was slipped to me by a source whose identity, naturally, shall be kept under wraps for the obvious reasons.” The item drew a swift and strongly-worded denial from Oscar Yabes, Drilon’s chief of staff.

“The senator categorically denies that he owns the property,” Yabes wrote in his published reply. “[While it] was indeed registered under the name of his step-daughter, Eduarda Genuino, [it] was already sold, and there was no way that the good senator had been involved in the transactions.

“It was owned by the Genuino family. It has already been sold as part of the business of the Genuinos,” Yabes continued. “[The Genuinos] are engaged in buy and sell and bid and sell of properties and have the capacity to buy the subject property which was sold in 2009, while Senator Drilon was in the private sector. Senator Drilon did not spend any for it and he never used any of the proceeds of the transaction. All taxes have also been paid by the Genuino family.”

You have to wonder, though, how the story of 17 Kawayan Road would have been told, had it been Drilon who was being impeached on orders of the President, instead of Corona. But I guess we’ll never know.