The Manila Prosecutor’s Office has dismissed the perjury complaint filed by Camp John Hay Development  Corp.  (CJHDevCo)  against the president and chief executive officer of the Bases  Conversion and Development  Authority (BCDA) on the ground that the complaint was prematurely filed.
This is the second dismissed complaint filed by CJHDevCo against BCDA executives, led by its president and CEO Arnel Casanova.
In his two-page resolution, Assistant City Prosecutor Nelson Pagaduan ruled that the  complaint of perjury could not be acted upon because “the  issue  is still premature to resolve.”
Pagaduan noted that the  alleged perjurious statements  attributed by CJHDevCo to the BCDA president stemmed from  a yet unresolved charge of estafa filed by BCDA against CJHDevCo.
The estafa complaint originated from the double sale by CJHDevCo  of a log home in Camp John  Hay  and is still pending in the Department of Justice (DoJ).
Casanova welcomed the decision and viewed the dismissed perjury and libel cases filed against BCDA officials as futile attempts to distract and harass them.
“The filing of these cases were obviously meant to distract and  dissuade us from making the CJHDevCo accountable for its questionable acts in the John Hay Special Economic Zone,” Casanova, a Harvard-educated criminal lawyer, said.
In his resolution, Pagaduan declared that “(not) until the issue to complaint of double sale had been finally resolved, (can) the complaint of perjury  …  be acted upon.”
The recommendation was approved by the city prosecutor through senior assistant city prosecutor Jessica Junsay-Ong.
The BCDA president’s counter-affidavit, which was cited in the prosecutor’s resolution, reiterated that the estafa complaint merely stated facts: that CJHDevCo did sell Loghome No. 9 twice; first in 1999 to Wilson Sy who paid P20 million as downpayment to CJHDevCo, and then to BCDA by way of dacion en pago executed on May 27, 2010; and that Sy’s lawyer informed BCDA of the said first sale verbally and in writing in 2010.