Hello,
I received this email concerning Sen. Villar.
It may help you understand how and why Sen. Villar is spending billions in
order to become Philippine president.
I leave it to your judgement if you would believe this or not, and whether
to forward this to others or not...
Henry
*Subject:* SHOCKING REVELATIONS from Former DPWH Reg. Dir. Lala & Former
HUDCC
*Sec Gen Hidalgo (MUST READ!)
*
------------------------------
*
The above is extracted from the Letter of DPWH Regional Director Robert Lala
to Former DPWH Secretary Hermogenes Esperon. The C5 Scandal however is small
fry compared to the revelations of Mr. Antonio Hidalgo, former Secretary
General of the Housing & Urban Development Coordinating Council from 1992 to
1998. You may read his strongly worded email below.*
------------------------------
*
Subject:* Villlar and low-cost housing
Dear Tong,
To believe in Manny Villar’s “cause”, whatever that may be, is
certainly your prerogative, brod. But it does not allow you to distort the
facts—to say that black is white or that greed is good.
Winnie Monsod’s writings on Villar’s anomalies on the Paranaque
road projects are pretty clear. I don’t need to comment further on them.
But I will answer as briefly as I can the downright false and
sometimes outrageous claims you make concerning Villar’s “heroic” role in
the government’s low-cost housing program.
True, Villar built many thousands of low-cost houses over more
than a decade under the Unified Home Lending Scheme (UHLP) of the socialized
housing law (E.O. 90) that he and his CREBA minions drafted and got Cory to
sign in 1986, during her emergency government when she had legislative
powers, by promising the pie in the sky of solving homelessness in the
Philippines once and for all. But he did this to rake in billions in profits
at the expense of the government, not out of a concern for the homeless
poor.
Look at the results of Villar’s thousands of houses under the UHLP
from 1986 to 1997 (when we reformed the UHLP to prevent Villar from
bankrupting the country). Villar became a billionaire. NHMFC, the financial
coordinator of the program, was bankrupted. The funders (SSS, GSIS,
Pag-Ibig) were stuck with billions in bad home mortgages covering Villar’s
houses and flirted with bankruptcy for a while. Eventually, these bad
mortgages had to be covered by the national government using its tax
revenues (including your taxes and mine) because the funders were covered by
a sovereign guarantee. Subsequently (beginning 2003 or 2004), the losses on
the bad mortgages had to be written off by selling them through special
purpose asset vehicles (SPAVS) at a fraction of their face value.
Meanwhile, look around you. *Nearly half of the residents of Metro
Manila still live in squatter areas!
*I repeat: Villar became a billionaire while the funders and the
national government suffered many billions in losses and the housing problem
is still there, as intractable as ever. Consequently, I strongly disagree
with your admiration of Villar’s record in low-cost housing. It was
motivated by greed and, in the end, enriched only himself and his cohorts at
the expense of the government and, ultimately, the taxpayers.
These outcomes were inevitable because of how Villar and his
buddies designed the UHLP. The roles of lenders, builders, and financing
agencies were jumbled up on purpose to benefit only the developers. Billions
were taken annually from the SSS, GSIS, and Pag-Ibig and given to the NHMFC
to disburse. The owners of the funds lost all control over how they were
lent out. But this control was not given to the NHMFC, which just allocated
mortgage quotas to developers (the Villar companies had the biggest quotas)
from the annual funds of the lenders and automatically released the face
amount of mortgages to the lenders upon submission of the mortgage papers.
No one checked the creditworthiness of the home buyers. The developers were
“originators” of mortgages—meaning that they went around the malls with
blank mortgage papers, waylaid passersby and enticed them to sign the
papers, and then went to the NHMFC to cash in.
This diabolical system without any financial controls was designed
by developers like Villar to rake in the profits. It resulted in default
rates of more than 70% in the mortgages and nearly caused a Philippine
economic crisis. It required the coordinated intervention of HUDCC, the
Dept. of Finance, SSS, GSIS, Pag-Ibig, and HIGC to prevent a financial
collapse. This was a very real danger then: we need only look at the recent
US financial crisis to see how bad home mortgages can drive even the world’s
largest economy to its knees.
*Naging bilyonaryo si Villar sa low-cost housing at the expense of
Filipino taxpayers. Kumita na siya, Tong. Huwag mo nang bigyan ng medalya.*
Finally, you imply that I am inconsistent in my position on
Villar’s role in this program because you say that HUDCC had “boasted” of
its production of low-cost houses thanks to Villar’s “vision.”
This is not true. I was always critical of Villar’s profiteering
in low-cost housing and never claimed credit for the houses his companies
built. I was appointed HUDCC Secretary General by President Ramos in June,
1995. I spent a few months going through the documentation of the housing
program and holding intensive discussions with the developers’
organizations, lenders, the Dept. of Finance, and the HUDCC financial
agencies. Then I wrote a series of memos to President Ramos that explained
the hopelessly flawed nature of the program, the extent of the financial
problems it had created, and what needed to be done to prevent financial
collapse. After getting the President’s instructions to proceed in 1996, I
set up the inter-agency task force to reform the UHLP and we completed our
work and stopped the profiteering of the developers in 1997.
Your brod,
Tony Hidalgo
*
From:* Jose Salvador Y Mirasol [mailto:Salvador.Mirasol@
Romulo.com<http://us.mc318.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected]>]
*
Sent:* Saturday, March 06, 2010 2:57 PM*
Subject:* THE REAL MANNY VILLAR
Antonio Hidalgo was the Secretary-General of the Housing & Urban Development
Coordinating Council from 1992 to 1998.
POSTSCRIPT
Villar used the NHMFC scheme described by Tony Hidalgo above to build up the
assets of C&P Homes, in view of an IPO launched in the mid-1990s. With the
IPO came more pressure to window-dress the books of C&P Homes to show
profitability. This pressure he addressed by irresponsibly building more
substandard homes, massively selling to borrowers with no paying ability,
and then, using his office as Congressman, force NHMFC to acquire these
subprime loans, getting the lion's share of the allocation in the process.
NHMFC was left with more than 300,000 of these non-performing loans with a
face value of more than P40 billion. Until today, NHMFC is hardly able to
collect on these loans. One of the usual complaints (and excuse for
non-payment) of defaulting borrowers is that the C&P houses were all
underdesigned and substandard.
Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, after prices of real estate
plummeted, Villar found himself defaulting on the bonds issued by his C&P
Homes. Several good faith investors and banks suffered huge reductions in
their credits as a result.
To pay off C&P's defaulted loans from banks, Villar forced these banks to
accept lands as settlement payment for the loans. Using his influenced as
Congressman, Speaker of the House and later as Senator, he forced his
creditor banks to accept lands whose only access to public roads was through
his own property. This meant that these banks had to pay him for the right
of way.
Villar's C&P loans and forced land payments contributed to the high level of
non-performing loans and repossessed properties of banks, the reason why the
SPAV Act had to be passed in 2003. Already a Senator at this time, Villar
tried to insert a provision in the SPAV bill that would grant the defaulted
borrowers (like himiself) the right to match the discounted price at which
the banks may sell their non-performing loans and repossessed properties to
third party good faith buyers. In effect, he wanted to give a non-paying
borrower like himself the right to require his lender to accept a fraction
of the principal loan as full payment of the loan. If not for the strong
opposition from the banks, this Villar insertion (not to be confused with
the C-5 insertion) would have become part of the law.
<http://groups.google.com/group/anvil-members?hl=en>
--
All Good Men must Speak to be Heard
Note: I am just forwarding this not because I'm against or for any
candidate in the coming election. Just sharing whatever info that passes
thru my email.
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