MANILA, Philippines—Jailtime just became all-too-real for wannabe mass housing magnate Delfin Lee.
Syndicated estafa, a non-bailable crime, is set to be filed against Lee and other officials of his housing firm Globe Asiatique after the justice department said that they found “probable cause” to bring the case before the courts.
This announcement on August 24, 2011 brought the almost one-and-a-half-year case one step forward as it moved slowly from the time officials of state-led housing loan lender Home Development Mutual Fund (also referred to as Pag-IBIG) complained in 2009 of the possible financial losses from the rampant marketing lies of Globe Asiatique agents.
Lee’s up-and-coming mass housing empire in Central Luzon and east of Metro Manila was apparently fueled by the toxic combination of aggressive Globe Asiatique agents who wanted to earn a quick buck from signing up “ghost” house buyers and the available financing from a lending window in Pag-IBIG that waived key requirements for borrowers buying Globe Asiatique houses.
These issues, which were tackled at Senate hearings, brought Lee to his knees.
It shuttered the media-savvy entrepreneur’s dream to expand his empire as fast as what the others before him did, like businessman-turned-politician Manuel Villar, a billionaire whose wealth was spawned by a combination of right connections and risks.
Countless and faceless Filipinos have been duped by risk-taking but well-connected businessmen in the past. Some have landed in jail, including Celso de los Angeles, another businessman-turned-mayor who headed the messy Legacy Group, but others have left investors holding the bag.
Filipinos have shunned risky but potentially rewarding investments in the past, no thanks to indiscriminate and badly handled bank runs, and the failures of several pre-need educational firms and real estate developers who ran away with investors who banked on these firms’ promises of a better future.
No wonder then that the appetite for a more robust capital market here at home has been weak. As a consequence, capital-intensive projects had to be dependent on foreign flows.
Lee may have been on the right track in meeting the dire need for respectable housing among the lower and middle class through his innovative township concept, but he now has to up his defense on whether he and his lieutenants followed the law.
His fate should be a message for businessmen who have plans to get rich at the expense of others, and for Filipino investors who hope that justice exists.
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By: Lala Rimando
Source: Newsbreak.ph, Aug. 24, 2011
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