It may be hard to believe that the Senate and House of Representatives can come to an agreement due to recent issues surrounding the 2019 budget and the mudslinging that came along with it, but the two chambers of Congress recently came together and issued consistent rulings on an important issue: the road right of way (RRoW) scam in Mindanao, particularly in Region XII, which reeks of graft and corruption, has been pinned on the cronies of former President Benigno “PNoy” Aquino.

“It won’t take long for PNoy, his cronies and government officials who were dumb enough to coalesce with them… to start waltzing towards their cold prison cells.

On 8 February, right before going into congressional recess, on the very last day of session, the House adopted the committee report of the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability, chaired by Rep. XJ Romualdez, on this issue. The report stated, “There is a manifest showing of a pattern employed by the syndicate led by Ms. Wilma Mamburan and Nelson Ti in submitting fabricated documents and representing fictitious claimants/landowners.” Among those implicated were former regional directors of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Region XII — Subair S. Diron and Reynaldo Tamayo.

A whopping P3.3 billion worth of fraudulent RRoW claims were said to have been approved by the syndicate funded by yellow crony Nelson Ti and his cohorts. In the detailed and meticulously written report of Rep. Romualdez, it was divulged by witness Roberto Catapang, Jr. that commissions amounting to 20 percent were handed to RD Tamayo who also had the gall and temerity of issuing more disbursement vouchers despite being flagged by Commission on Audit (CoA).

Prior to this action by the House, the Senate, on 6 February, adopted the report of its Blue Ribbon Committee, chaired by crusader Sen. Richard Gordon, to file charges against government officials and private individuals, which also included Mamburan, Ti, Diron and Tamayo, for the same RRoW scam, robbing the government of P255.5 million. Gordon recommended the immediate filing of a plunder case against the persons identified in its report.

We should go even way back when the Department of Justice (DoJ), under the leadership of then Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre, first unearthed this conspiracy sometime in November 2017, when the NBI submitted reports that a criminal syndicate submitted fake titles in the name of inexistent individuals to claim just compensation from the DPWH for the government’s expropriation of land for projects located in Region XII. This was done in conspiracy with several government officials from DPWH, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Registry of Deeds, City Assessor’s Office of General Santos City, CoA, and the regional trial courts. Although Aguirre’s valuation of the amount defrauded is much bigger — P8.7 billion to be exact — the person identified as the financier was none other than Nelson Ti, yet again. A plunder complaint was eventually filed in March 2018 before the Office of the Ombudsman.

Although the amounts said to have been plundered by this criminal syndicate varied, the Senate, House and the DoJ, all included businessman Nelson Ti in its findings. But who is he?

For starters, Nelson Ti is said to be a close relative of Domingo Lee, the yellow’s chosen ambassador to China during their time and the person you must be Googling about right now. Why? Because you will see perhaps the most humiliating questioning ever done in the Commission on Appointments, kudos to former Sen. Serge Osmeña. Imagine an ambassador who cannot define the word “diplomacy?” It was downright humiliating that the CA rejected his appointment thrice and he had to beg PNoy to withdraw his appointment.

Nelson Ti is also an associate of Eldon Cruz, husband of the eldest sister of PNoy, Ballsy Aquino-Cruz. This couple also had its share of corruption allegations, particularly the $30 million extortion attempt made on the Ambassador of the Czech Republic regarding the bidding for new MRT-3 coaches by the Czech company Inekon back in 2013. Although their involvement was later recanted by the same ambassador, we believe the reliable proverb that where there is smoke, then there must definitely be a fire.

A quick check on Nelson Ti would likewise reveal that he is a fugitive both in the Philippines, by virtue of a warrant of arrest issued by the Makati RTC for estafa, and in the US, where he was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2008, together with several other Filipinos, for a bank scam where they defrauded US Export Import Bank to issue loans in favor of dubious export companies from 1999 to 2005, which was said to have amounted to a staggering $80 million. A number of Fil-Ams were arrested and even pleaded guilty, but Ti, once again the identified mastermind of the scam, remained unscathed here in the Philippines.

As the months go by, the identities of more and more of these yellow cronies will unravel and will soon face the music. The schemes that funded the yellow war chest have been busted, e.g., DoH’s Dengvaxia vaccine, DoTr’s MRT-3 maintenance contracts, Department of Foreign Affairs’ passport printing contract and DPWH’s RRoW scam. It won’t take long for PNoy, his cronies and government officials who were dumb enough to coalesce with them (e.g., DPWH RD Diron and Tamayo) to start waltzing towards their cold prison cells.