Dagupan lost Awai land, seeks recovery of P16-M
SALE DECLARED NULL AND VOID
THE Department of Agrarian Reforms (DAR) has declared as null and void ab initio the sale of a 30-hectare property in Barangay Awai, San Jacinto to the Dagupan CIty government sometime in 2002 supposedly to become a sanitary landfill.
This was revealed by Mayor Belen Fernandez in her state of the city address before the Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP) at CSI Stadia on September 10.
With DAR’s decision, she said her administration will seek to recover the P16 million paid by the Dagupan City government and file criminal charges against all involved in the transaction.
The property was sold by one Jose Mariano Cuna to the Dagupan City government during the administration of then Mayor Benjamin Lim, just five months after he bought the same from Estrella Sangalang of San Jacinto, one of the heirs of the original owner, former Pangasinan Governor Don Juan Fernandez.
The mayor said the city auditor discovered that although the property was already paid in full by the Lim administration, no title was transferred to city government.
Records show that before Cuna sold the property to Dagupan, the land was already the subject of litigation between the heirs of the property and the tenants before the DAR arbitration board (DARAB).
Cuna and the Dagupan City government were eventually cited in the complaint filed by the tenants as respondent.
It was learned that the city government lost its case before DARAB by default since the city’s lawyers never appeared during the hearings of the case.
DARAB subsequently awarded the 30-hectare property to the tenants and or their heirs who filed the case.
Former Mayor Lim, whose health condition his son Vice Mayor Brian Lim still refuses to divulge, may be a party to the court suit that will be initiated by the city government as a result of the recent DAR decision.
Members of the city council who authorized Lim to purchase the dubious property may be also be held responsible for the anomalous purchase. (Leonardo Micua)
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