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From ‘Ill-Gotten’ to ‘Legally Gifted’: The PCGG Guide to Laundering Stolen Land in 39 Easy Years

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Louis ‘Barok’ Biraogo

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From ‘Ill-Gotten’ to ‘Legally Gifted’: The PCGG Guide to Laundering Stolen Land in 39 Easy Years
Step 1: Seize the land. Step 2: Forget the one-page form. Step 3: Profit (for someone else).

By Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo — December 11, 2015

The Greatest Legal Heist in History – Perpetrated by the Good Guys

MGA ka-kweba, ladies and gentlemen of the tax-paying republic, gather ‘round.
Today we autopsy the single greatest heist in Philippine history where the robbers wore barong, sat in air-conditioned offices, and never even had to pull a gun. They just… forgot. For thirty-nine f*cking years.

Res ipsa loquitur.
(The thing speaks for itself. Translation for the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) legal department: “You f*cked up, obviously.”)

The Commission on Audit (COA) just dropped the most polite war crime in bureaucratic history. In their 2024 audit they basically wrote, in the gentlest possible government language:

“Hey PCGG, remember those 470 pieces of land you seized from Marcos and his cronies? Yeah, well, 11 of them—worth ₱641.54 million—got sold to “innocent” buyers while your cases were still pending. Because you never bothered to annotate a Notice of Lis Pendens. Also, the rest are rotting or full of squatters. Love, COA.”

That’s not an audit observation. That’s a crime scene with a cover sheet.

“The only thing longer than a government lunch break? PCGG’s ‘temporary’ mission—39 years and shredding.”

How to Lose a Country’s Money Without Even Stealing It – A Masterclass

Imagine this: you finally catch the bank robber who stole billions. You handcuff him, seize the vault, put a sign that says “PROPERTY OF THE REPUBLIC—DO NOT TOUCH,” and then… you don’t even close the door. You just leave it swinging in the wind with a neon sign that says “Free Real Estate.”

That is exactly what the PCGG did.
A Notice of Lis Pendens is one page. ONE. PAGE. You file it with the Register of Deeds, they stamp it on the title, and suddenly any buyer who touches the property does so at their own peril. No lis pendens = clean title = new owner gets to keep the land that was literally stolen from the Filipino people.

₱641 million didn’t walk away.
It was escorted out the front door by government incompetence wearing a salute.

Statutory Beatdown – The Laws They Broke While “Protecting” Our Money

Let’s quote the laws so even the PCGG commissioners pretending to be asleep can follow along:

  1. Presidential Decree No. 1529, Section 76 – If you’re in court fighting over land and you don’t annotate lis pendens, the case “shall have no effect upon registered land as against persons other than the parties.”
    Translation: You just gifted the property to the first guy with cash and a fake smile.
  2. Republic Act No. 3019, Section 3(e) – Causing undue injury to the government through “gross inexcusable negligence” is a crime.
    The Supreme Court in Uriarte v. People already said forgetting basic duties that cost the government hundreds of millions qualifies. So yes, this isahan na lang kung sino ang unang commissioner na makukulong.
  3. 1987 Constitution, Article XI, Section 1 – “Public office is a public trust.”
    The irony is thicker than Imelda’s makeup: the agency created to punish the ultimate breach of public trust just pulled off its own world-class betrayal—only slower, dumber, and with more memos.

Coming Soon to a Docket Near You: “The Case That Will Never Be Filed”

Who do we charge? The commissioners from the 1990s to the early 2000s? Their corpses? Their grandchildren?

The Office of the Ombudsman will do its usual song-and-dance: “ongoing fact-finding,” “lack of funds for investigation,” “the dog ate the case folder,” “it happened before my term po.”
Meanwhile the new owners are already building malls on land your taxes were supposed to recover.

Classic Philippine accountability: everybody is responsible, therefore nobody is.

Choose Your Own Adventure: Why Did ₱641 Million Disappear?

Let’s play “Why Did the PCGG Let ₱641 Million Disappear?” Choose your fighter:

  • Weaponized Incompetence™ – Deliberately not filing lis pendens so the assets could be “laundered” back to friendly hands with clean titles.
  • 39-Year Administrative Coma – The agency was supposed to be temporary. It turned into a retirement home with a sequestration hobby.
  • Presscon > Paperwork – Why file a one-page notice when you can hold a press conference announcing how many billions you’ve “recovered” (on paper)?

₱641 Million = Real Things That Will Never Happen Because Government Excelled at Losing

That’s not a number. That’s:

  • 600+ kilometers of farm-to-market roads
  • 1,200 rural health units
  • Full college scholarships for 120,000+ students
  • Or one hell of a retirement fund for whichever crony just scored 170,000 sqm of prime land because government lawyers were too busy doing… whatever it is they do.

Instead, the land is gone. The rest—₱581 million more—is either crumbling or serving as free village for informal settlers while the Republic pays the legal fees.

Nuclear-Level Recommendations (That Will Be Ignored in 3…2…1…)

  1. Office of the Ombudsman, file the goddamn Republic Act No. 3019 cases tomorrow. Name names. 1990s–2000s commissioners, legal division heads—drag them all.
  2. Commission on Audit, issue personal money claims. Make the responsible officers refund ₱641 million out of their own pockets. Watch how fast memory improves.
  3. Dissolve the PCGG. Today. If your core competency is losing assets, you have achieved peak government efficiency—time to shut the circus down. Hand the remaining inventory to the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) or Department of Justice (DOJ). Even benign neglect would be an upgrade.
  4. Publish the full list online—every single sequestered property, current photo, title status, and the name of the PCGG officer assigned to it. Let’s turn accountability into a blood sport even TikTok can understand.

Wake the Hell Up

This is not an audit finding.
This is grand larceny wearing a government ID.

To every remaining honest prosecutor, investigative journalist, and furious taxpayer still reading this:
Treat this like a crime scene, not a footnote.

Because if we let another ₱641 million walk out the door just because someone “forgot” to file a form, then congratulations—we just re-elected Ferdinand Marcos Sr. without needing a single ballot.

Tapos na ang biro.
Gising.

— Barok

Key Citations

Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo

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