The Nayong Pilipino puzzle

The news read like farce: On Aug. 7, President Duterte sacked Nayong Pilipino Foundation (NPF) board of trustees chair Patricia Yvette Ocampo and the rest of the NPF board—at about the same time that the agency’s top brass was holding groundbreaking ceremonies on a new project called NayonLanding, a $1.5-billion integrated leisure and  resort casino to be developed by Landing Resorts Philippines Development Corp., a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Landing International Development Ltd. The project, opening in 2022, was set to rise on a 9.57-hectare property at Entertainment City in Parañaque City.

In her speech at the ceremonies, Ocampo heaped praise on the NPF’s project partner: “It was only the Landing group that embraced our entire concept. And that is why our whole board is 200 percent supporting [Landing International] chairman Yang [Zhihui]. I look forward to a very long future together.” But, just minutes after her remarks, Malacañang announced via a press conference, apparently without telling the NPF officials beforehand, that the President had sacked all the agency’s top officers for allegedly having entered into an agreement with Landing that was “grossly disadvantageous” to the government. So flabbergasted were Ocampo and the other officials that they were seen fleeing the event right after and refusing to talk to media.

The surreal incident wasn’t the first controversy to bedevil Nayong Pilipino. In 2017, the NPF—a government-owned and -controlled corporation attached to the Department of Tourism—was rocked by accusations of corruption when Maria Fema Duterte, a distant niece of Mr. Duterte and a board member of NPF, lodged charges at the Office of the Ombudsman against Ocampo and seven other NPF board members for alleged graft, dishonesty, gross neglect of duty, grave misconduct, inefficiency and incompetence. Maria Fema Duterte previously accused Ocampo of “administrative infractions” because Ocampo had refused to follow the President’s decision to name Maria Fema Duterte as NPF executive director (ED). Ocampo contended that the ED had to be chosen from among the board members.

The Landing contract, on the other hand, got the ire of Mr. Duterte because, according to presidential spokesperson Harry Roque, “it leased a government property for a ridiculous long period of time of 70 years beyond the lifetime of anyone.” But, as it turned out, the President appeared to have been misinformed; the lease was only for 25 years. Nevertheless, “the rental payment was still unconscionable,” Roque insisted.

Some questions immediately arise from this odd incident. The contract for such a high-stakes development must have been in the works for months, the parties presumably spending untold hours negotiating, fine-tuning and drawing up the final draft of the agreement. That the proceedings managed to go as far as the literal groundbreaking before the plug was pulled on the project is strange, to say the least. No one did any oversight or due diligence on the proposed contract before it was signed? And no background check was made on the Chinese investors, specifically Landing chair Yang Zhihui?

The latter question has become even more pivotal with the latest bizarre twist to this story: Yang was arrested on Friday in Cambodia and deported to China on allegations of bribery and for supposedly running an investment scam. As a consequence, Landing’s share price dropped a precipitous 35 percent Thursday morning at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, before trading on it was suspended. Yang is reportedly also being looked at for “suspicious business ties” with China Huarong Asset Management, whose former head is being investigated for involvement in one of China’s biggest financial scandals.

After Ocampo et al.’s firing, no further details were forthcoming from Malacañang. If the officials’ signatures were indeed on an anomalous contract, when will they be haled into court? Landing, for its part, said in a statement that, “Unless the lease contract is canceled or nullified on solid legal grounds by the courts, Landing has reason to believe that it is a valid leaseholder and can legally proceed with its project.” Which raises another question: Whence comes such bravado to defy the wishes of the President himself?

From the tangled decision-making on various fronts to the checkered character of the project’s Chinese partner, this story appears to have more to it than has been revealed so far.