The origin of certain land titles tied to reclaimed portions of Taguig City will soon be scrutinized by anti-graft investigators, after Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson said his team traced four parcels to certificates he described as fraudulently issued.
The four lots vary widely in size and in how they were registered. According to Lacson, one spans 9,204 square meters and carries an original certificate of title under an administrative patent, while a smaller 5,000-square-meter parcel obtained its OCT through judicial or ordinary land registration. A far larger tract of 181,077 square meters is held under a homestead patent with a transfer certificate of title, and a fourth parcel of 193,027 square meters likewise sits under a TCT.
Alongside those four, the senator reported that another set of four parcels turned up no matching lots in the digitized records of the Land Registration Authority (LRA).
Lacson said he made the initial findings public specifically to counter suggestions that his earlier disclosures about reclamation activity in the city were fabricated. He framed the release as a direct answer to Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, who had repeatedly demanded proof. “Since Sen. (Alan Peter) Cayetano keeps publicly asking for evidence, I’ll give it to him, in the spirit of public interest,” Lacson said in a social media post.
For now, the senator is holding back certain identifying information, including the names of those who received the titles and the OCT and TCT numbers, citing the continuing nature of the inquiry. Those particulars, he said, will be forwarded to investigators as the case develops. “All of these will likewise be turned over to the Ombudsman fact-finding team for their further appropriate action,” he said, as quoted by The Manila Times.
The broader review centers on roughly 38.83 hectares along the Taguig side of Laguna Lake that Lacson maintains were reclaimed illegally. The titles now under examination were reportedly drawn from materials the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA) supplied to his office, and he has asked the LRA to reconstruct how each was issued.
Lacson explained the purpose of that backtracking in blunt terms. “I requested the LRA to backtrack the history of the issued OCTs (original certificates of title) and other modes of titling, so we will find out how they were manipulated with the end in view of filing criminal charges against those responsible,” he said in a statement reported by the Manila Bulletin.
Should the PRA move to reclaim the properties, Lacson noted, the questioned titles could ultimately be treated as void ab initio — invalid from the moment they were issued.
