PCGG scolded over sale of sequestered assets

The Commission on Audit has scolded the Presidential Commission on Good Government over its laxity in securing the real properties sequestered from the Marcos family and their alleged cronies and business associates, noting that 11 were already sold even when litigation is still ongoing, the COA 2024 annual audit report on the PCGG showed.

- By ELIZABETH MARCELO

In the report, the COA said 470 sequestered properties, with a total value of P3.11 billion and an aggregate land area of 11.072 million square meters, remained unregistered or were not annotated as lis pendens or pending litigation.

“As a result (of the failure to annotate), 11 properties totaling 170,484.4 sqm and valued at P641.54 million were found to have been transferred or sold even while legal proceedings were still ongoing, without any preventive action from the agency,” the COA said, referring to the transfers of ownership to third parties from the 1990s to the early 2000s.

“This agency’s (failure to exercise) preventive action will result in difficulty recovering the assets from the third parties who acquired them under assumption of a clean title, without any annotation of lis pendens, to the disadvantage of the government,” the COA added.