Senate panel to OPA: Probe MPLT land purchase

A Senate committee had asked the Office of the Public Auditor to investigate the Marianas Public Land Trust’s 2008 purchase of private land on Capital Hill for $272,000, allegedly without the blessing of the full MPLT board, without any appraisal report prior to buying the property, and a possible conflict of interest involving one of two former MPLT trustees and their relative(s).

Sen. Frank Cruz (R-Tinian), chairman of the Senate Committee on Executive Appointments and Government Investigations, cited several reasons for OPA to further investigate the questionable land purchase.

Preliminary information that the EAGI panel gathered involving the land purchase had already cost the reappointments to the MPLT board of its former chair Alvaro Santos and Gregoria-Fitial Omar.

Santos is the governor’s ally, and Fitial-Omar is Gov. Benigno R. Fitial’s younger sister.

When the EAGI panel asked for and received more information and documents from MPLT about the land purchase, the committee found more possible areas for investigations by OPA.

Pedro Deleon Guerrero, the current chairman of the MPLT board, said yesterday he welcomes any OPA investigation if that’s what it will take to clear the names of former MPLT board members.

“I don’t have a problem with OPA investigating it. I welcome it in the interest of clearing these peoples’ names,” he said in a phone interview.

The Senate EAGI panel received on Jan. 3 Fitial and Lt. Gov. Eloy Inos’s re-appointment of Santos and Fitial-Omar to serve a second term of six years on the MPLT board.

After a public notice for a scheduled public hearing on the nominations, the EAGI committee said it had received information and requests to look into MPLT’s 2008 land purchase under Santos’s chairmanship allegedly because it was bought without the approval of the majority of the board “but rather a person or two only, which contradicts and violates the bylaws” of MPLT.

Santos, during a Feb. 7 public hearing on his nomination, told the EAGI panel that the land purchase was legitimate and approved by majority of the MPLT board.

The EAGI panel asked for more information and documents about the land purchase, including journals of meetings wherein they discussed the purchase and appraisal of the property.

On Feb. 23, Santos submitted to the EAGI panel two pages of what Cruz described as “personal letter explaining and justifying” buying the land.

On March 7, the Senate rejected Santos’ confirmation, at the recommendation of the EAGI Committee “because he chose not to comply with the EAGI Committee to submit any and all documents relative to the purchase of the private property in question.”

Two days later, the EAGI panel asked for any and all documents related to the land purchase using an Open Government Act request for information.

On March 22, the committee received documents from MPLT, but not those considered under attorney-client privilege.

Cruz’s EAGI committee cited six reasons to further probe the matter.

First, the journals of meetings were not clear that the majority of the MPLT board approved the land purchase.

Second, the appraisal reports came after the property was already bought.

Third, the appraisal report revealed that the property can be for rural use only, but MPLT’s purpose was to use the land for its office space and commercial use.

Fourth, two checks issued on March 14 and 15 amounting to $27,200 and $244,800, respectively, for a total of $272,000, were endorsed by Santos and Fitial-Omar.

Fifth, then former MPLT treasurer Norman Tenorio refused to endorse or sign the check for the land purchase.

Sixth, a 2011 appraisal of the same private property valued the land at $132,000, a sharp depreciation from the time it was bought in 2008 at $272,000.

Cruz said sources also revealed that “party of benefits and individual in question are somewhat have family relationship (sic).

The EAGI panel chair reiterated that the committee’s actions were not politically motivated.