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- He said that it is to avoid “conflicting findings” when it comes to other investigations to the media giant.
The Congress postponed its investigations and hearings regarding the authenticity of the ABS-CBN’s land ownership of its compound in Mother Ignacia, Quezon City.
A few months after 70 lawmakers rejected ABS-CBN Corporation’s request for a fresh 25-year franchise, it opened another issue as congressmen are now looking into the ownership of the compound.
According to the House of Representatives’ official website, the House Committee on Justice will supposedly start to investigate ABS-CBN on September 23.
However, during the day that it’s supposed to start, committee chairman Leyte Third District Representative Vicente Veloso III shared that it has been postponed to a later date after receiving “advice from the leadership.”
He added that they still need to wait for the investigation results of the House Committee on Legislative Franchises and Committee on Good Governance regarding the network’s alleged violation of franchise terms.
Veloso said that it is to avoid “conflicting findings.”
In a request for the network’s franchise to be denied, the TWG claimed that ABS-CBN’s Transfer Certificate of Title (TCT) of its compound property cannot be found in the Register of Deeds. It has caught the attention of Sagip party-list Rep. Rodante Marcoleta which led him to file a House resolution asking for the authenticity of ABS-CBN’s title to the property.
Marcoleta stated that during the franchise hearings, the representatives of the Kapamilya network only presented a copy of the property’s TCT. Upon further investigation, Marcoleta said that the title only referred to an area measuring only 42 square meters and not the whole 44,000 square meter lot that is around the size of the compound.
He also described it as “dubious” and said that the government could file an action resulting in nullification of the land title.
