Malacañang said Wednesday the open letter by the sacked head of Nayong Pilipino Foundation is an “open defiance” of President Rodrigo Duterte after the foundation placed a newspaper advertisement asserting the legality of its lease contract with a casino developer.
“I read [the letter] and I was troubled about it. This is an open defiance of the decision of the President,” Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said in a radio interview.
He made the statement even as Senator Francis Escudero filed a resolution for a Senate inquiry into the alleged graft and corruption committed by the former trustees and officials of the Nayong Pilipino Foundation when it entered into an integrated resort project to be built on its property in Parañaque City.
Through Senate Resolution 858, Escudero asked the Senate to direct the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to investigate the NFP’s 50-year lease agreement with Landing Resorts Philippines Development Corp., whose parent company is the Hong Kong-listed Landing International.
Landing International is set to build a $1.5-billion integrated resort and theme park to be called Nayong Landing in the Entertainment City, home to Resorts World, Solaire, City of Dreams and Okada Manila. The project is expected to be completed in 2022.
Roque said the fired NPF members should have complied with the orders of Duterte as the President had previously stressed a moratorium on casinos.
“The letter, which has been published in not one but two publications, is an open defiance of the President’s decision,” Roque said.
“They should wait for them to become the President before they do actions like this.”
“The President has said the contract is flawed and that it must proceed with a public bidding… They are just wasting money,” Roque said.
“What else is difficult to understand about the President’s moratorium on casinos? He will not approve a new casino.”
Roque said the NFP board should hire a Chinese translator since they did not grasp Duterte’s pronouncements in Tagalog.
Roque also asked why the Hong Kong-listed Landing International Development Ltd. still insisted in pushing through with the lease.
“What troubles me is the fact that Landing still insists when their chairman was nabbed in another country for facing a case. I bet a lot of controversies will be out. And the President has only seen the tip of the iceberg,” Roque said.
Landing chairman Yang Zhihui was arrested in Cambodia and deported to China on Thursday to face the bribery charges against him. Chinese news reports said the Chinese tycoon was reported missing hours after his stocks plunged to almost 20 percent.
“If the NPF trustees and officials believe that they were unfairly accused of graft and corruption, then they should focus their energies on any investigation of the charges,” Roque said in an official statement.
“However, for now, let us respect the decision of the President. PRRD’s [Duterte’s] stance remains: He does not want a new casino. What the NPF trustees and officials did was actually a violation of the President’s order that there will be no more new casinos allowed to operate in this country.”
In its full-page advertisement, former NPF chairwoman Patricia Ocampo expressed the foundation’s innocence.
“We are innocent of the utterly baseless charge of corruption. We shall not allow our names and reputations to be recklessly smeared by entities who have selfish and monopolistic business interests to protect,” she said.
She said the lease, forged with LIDL’s local subsidiary Landing Resorts Philippines Development Corp., was shortened to 25 years with the least rate of P570 per square meter monthly.
Ocampo also said the project did not require public bidding “precisely because it is a lease.”