THE CITY BUILDER

By Arnel Casanova

October 21, 2025

Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.

SINCE the government started the privatization and development of Fort Bonifacio into what is now the Bonifacio Global City, unscrupulous parties in cahoots with corrupt government officials have been engaged in countless and fraudulent land claims and sales to ignorant parties driven by speculative greed. Aside from the professional squatting syndicates that are operating and earning hundreds of millions of pesos from the sale of fake titles and property rights, numerous retired generals and corrupt politicians are involved as well.

To quiet all these fraudulent and baseless claims on the lands of Fort Bonifacio, as BCDA general counsel, I pursued vigorously, despite the naysayers and critics, the cases against two organizations involved in the illegal claims on 82 hectares of prime lands — the Southside Homeowners Associations, Inc. (SHAI) and the Navy Officers Village Association, Inc. (Novai), composed of retired generals and their wives. Our legal victories in these two landmark cases created strong precedents against land scams on the former military reservation that was known more than a hundred years ago as Fort William McKinley, when the US Army established their main army camp in the area. The court ruled that military reservations are inalienable and cannot be the subject of the commerce of man.Can we still turn things around? 

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There have been countless claims by professional squatters such as the Tallano Group, the Acopiado Group and the Rodriguez Group who have invoked non-existent court rulings allegedly vesting title in their favor for almost the entire half of Luzon island. However, the most perilous of the claims that almost succeeded, if not for our timely intervention in the Supreme Court, were these two cases because of the influence of the claimants that weighed down heavily on the weak bureaucracy prone to corruption and undue pressure.

However, despite the existence of these important precedents, many land claims still persist in the lands of Fort Bonifacio. The past administration saw the mushrooming of expensive houses in the areas adjoining the Southern Police District headquarters, the 10-hectare Consular Area adjoining the developing McKinley West and some of the Fort Bonifacio areas adjoining Dasmariñas Village where the Army Support Command has been.

During the pandemic in 2020, the Philippine Navy lost its case in the Supreme Court against three former generals, who, the court stated, had gained the right to buy the property only in 1996 through an award by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, while the Philippine Navy’s golf course has been there for the Navy’s use since 1976. While Proclamation 461 creating the AFP Officer’s Village Association (Afpovai) declared portions of Fort Bonifacio as alienable and disposable, it has excluded portions that are still in use by the armed forces for public and quasi-public purposes. Such exclusion meant that those portions still utilized and occupied by the Navy remained to be inalienable. It meant as well that when the Navy continued to possess, occupy and utilize these portions as its security buffer, training ground and facilities for rest and recreation of its officers, these portions were earmarked for public and quasi-public purposes.

The occupation of that place by the armed forces and its use as a military reservation have been of judicial notice since the time of the Americans and until its transfer to the armed forces of the Republic of the Philippines when we attained our independence and sovereignty. Its use as a military reservation has been more than a century. Being a military reservation and training ground for soldiers, open spaces such as this are required. Hence, when such open spaces are still being utilized by the military, the burden of proving that such portions were not being used for public or quasi-public purposes should have been on the retired generals, who should have known this fact since they served on these grounds as their military camp.

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Yet, despite this very well-known fact, the DENR still awarded these lots to the retired generals in 1996 and 1998 when real estate values began to skyrocket because of the development of the Bonifacio Global City. The Navy argued that such an award was irregular. But the case was lost on a legal technicality. The DENR official who awarded those lots should have been made accountable. The value of the entire Navy Golf Course could have funded the much-awaited modernization of our Navy in the face of Chinese aggression in the West Philippine Sea.

Recently, a friend inquired about the authenticity of an alleged Transfer Certificate of Title under the Torrens system covering two hectares of the Consular land area. According to him, someone has been peddling the land worth hundreds of millions of pesos. Upon investigation, I realized that the same party had lost in the Supreme Court in her attempt to force the city assessor to issue a tax declaration.

Despite the loss in the legal case, the same party reportedly secured a Transfer Certificate of Title covering two hectares of Consular land that has been administered by the Bases Conversion and Development Authority. Again, the case has reached the Supreme Court because the lower courts kept on ruling in favor of unscrupulous claimants despite the glaring fact that no one could have valid and legitimate claims over Fort Bonifacio lands because this has been a military reservation for more than a century. Other than our military, no one could have possibly occupied it in open, continuous, exclusive and notorious possession under the concept of an owner in good faith.

This is tantamount to the plunder of our national patrimony — with our own former military officers claiming the military camps that they should have been defending. Our judiciary and our legal system must be vigilant enough so as not to lose these valuable lands on mere technicalities.

https://www.manilatimes.net/2025/10/21/opinion/columns/land-scams-in-bonifacio-global-city/2204203