Surigao del Norte 2nd district Rep. Robert Ace Barbers (center) leads the turnover of documents to the OSG (Contributed photo)

The House quad-committee (quad-comm)-chairmen turned over to the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) on Monday, Oct. 21 a collection of documents that would help the latter in forfeiture proceedings on local properties brought by "Chinese nationals pretending to be Filipinos". 

Leading the turnover rites was quad-comm overall chairman, Surigao del Norte 2nd district Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, who estimated the quantity of the involved lands to be "in the thousands of hectares". 

"Let me emphasize also na ito sila ay nagpanggap na mga Filipino. Gumanit sila ng mga peke at mga spurious na mga dokumento na nagpapatunay na sila ay mga Filipino, until [we] have discovered na sila po ay mga Chinese nationals," Barbers said in a subsequent press conference. 

(Let me emphasize also that they pretended to be Filipinos. They used fake and spurious documents to prove they are Filipino, until we discovered that they were Chinese nationals.) 

"Meron din po silang ginamit ng mga dummies na mga Filipino, apparently Filipino-Chinese. Nandyan po yan sa ating mga listahan. So makikita po natin na ito ay panlilinlang sa atin," added the veteran congressman. 

(They also used Filipinos as dummies, apparently Filipino-Chinese. Those are on our list. So we can see that we were deceived.) 

The document handover is part of the mega-panel’s broader investigation into illegal Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs), the drug trade, land grabbing by Chinese nationals, and extrajudicial killings (EJKs) linked to the previous Duterte administration’s war on drugs. 

Also present during the turnover were the other quad-comm chairmen namely Santa Rosa City lone district Rep. Dan Fernandez, ABANG LINGKOD Party-list Rep. Joseph Stephen "Caraps" Paduano, Manila 6th district Rep. Bienvenido "Benny" Abante Jr.; and vice chairman Antipolo City 2nd district Rep. Romeo Acop. 

Central to this case is Aedy Tai Yang, a Chinese national who allegedly used such fraudulent documents to skirt foreign ownership laws, enabling him to acquire land and set up businesses illegally. 

Among the submitted documents wre Yang’s Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)-issued birth certificate from 2004, despite his claim of being born in 1983. Records from the Municipal Civil Registry of San Antonio, Nueva Ecija, indicate that his birth documents were destroyed in a fire, casting doubt on the legitimacy of his citizenship claim. 

Further evidence includes certifications from the PSA on Yang’s marriage, tax declarations for properties in his name, and corporate records linked to him, such as those from Empire 999 Realty Corporation and Sunflare Industrial Supply Corp. These companies are tied to suspicious land acquisitions, with records from the Land Registration Authority (LRA) revealing properties owned by Empire 999’s incorporators. 

Empire 999 also owned the warehouse in Mexico, Pampanga, where a shabu shipment worth P3.6 billion was seized in 2023. 

The quad-comm presented documents showing questionable land deals between Yang and the local government of Mexico, Pampanga, supported by memorandums of agreement,

deeds of sale, and municipal resolutions that bypassed legal processes. 

The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has confirmed that some of the lands sold by Yang did not undergo the required conversion process, further highlighting the illegal nature of these transactions. 

In its letter to Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra, the quad-comm emphasized the national security risks posed by these activities, urging swift action. “These actions are blatant violations of our laws and call for immediate executive intervention,” it stated. 

Assistant Solicitor Generals Hermes Ocampo and Gilbert Medrano, and Senior State Solicitor Neil Lorenzo received the documents from the quad-comm chairmen. 

“We trust your office will prioritize this matter and act swiftly to protect the integrity of our nation’s legal and economic systems,” the special four-way panel told the OSG.