Senator Aquilino Pimentel III recently visited General Santos City to investigate a high-profile land-grabbing case involving spurious original certificates of title (OCTs), stepping up the Senate-led campaign against fake land titles.
Pimentel, who took time out from his party’s busy presidential election campaign, visited this southern Mindanao city to see for himself the property in question.
Arriving at the General Santos City International Airport, Pimentel proceeded to conduct an inspection of the disputed land, a 707-hectare government property which is located right beside the airport. The senator was given a briefing on the local situation by Miguel Dominguez, a director of Alsons Development and Investment Corp.
Pimentel chairs the Senate committee on justice and human rights, which has been conducting a long-running probe into the proliferation of fake land titles in the country, particularly in General Santos where some 6,000 fake land titles are reportedly in circulation.
“Actually, the number is not just 6,000,” the senator said. “In my estimate, these fake land titles might reach up to 10,000 in Gensan alone.”
“These are alarming developments, which is why we should bring these cases to court,” Pimentel said. “It should be one case per dispute so the judge can focus on the issues specific to each case.”
“Until we are able to clean the records of the Land Registration Authority [LRA], there will always be a big obstacle to commercial activities in areas covered by fake land titles,” Pimentel warned.
Pimentel’s visit was close on the heels of a decision of the Regional Trial Court of General Santos, which issued a status quo ante temporary restraining order last March 22, which stopped the city’s Register of Deeds from registering the supposed sale of this state-owned property in the names of supposed owners of the fake land titles. This status quo ante order restores the situation in question to the state where it was before the conflict arose which, in this case, refers to the time when both the LRA and NBI had declared the subject OCTs to be fake.
Aldevinco signed an Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA) with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in 1992. Under the terms of the IFMA, Aldevinco has developed and reforested the property that is now planted with mango,pomelo, banana, molave and mahogany trees.
While at the site, Dominquez informed Pimentel that the other claimants belonged to a group headed by a Romeo Confesor who suddenly surfaced in 2003 brandishing OCTs that supposedly covered the 707-hectare property.
These land titles were “diffused” in 2014 when a Violeta Pangandaman presented to the city’s Registry of Deeds a voluntary transaction consisting of five Deeds of Absolute Sale—under the name of Romeo Confesor et al—all in favor of Jimmy T. Tang, owner of the Manila-based Avenue Electrical Supply Co.
Aldevinco’s IFMA experience is a prime example of this, Dominquez said. The company was, in fact, exercising control over the area as early as 1964 by virtue of a pasture lease agreement that was granted to it by the then Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources following its purchase of the PLA rights from Tuason Enterprises.
Thus it came as a complete surprise for Aldevinco when in July 2003 it was informed by the DENR’s Community Environment and Natural Resources Office in Region XII that an OCT issued in the name of a certain Pedro De Ramos “appeared to embrace” the parcel of land covered by the company’s IFMA.
This was quickly followed by the discovery of four other titles, all OCTs, issued to Excelsa Lauron, Ralderico Confesor, Julita Confesor and Romeo Confesor. The technical description of each of the five OCTs covered the whole IFMA area of the company. Inquiries made by Aldevinco with the authorities readily revealed that all five OCTs were fake.
