Former Cebu City Police Office Director PCOL Royina Garma answers questions from the Quad-Committee, which continues its fifth hearing at the House of Representatives in Quezon City on September 12, 2024. Maria Tan, ABS-CBN News/FileMANILA — The House quad committee on Monday submitted "critical" documents to the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) and urged it to coordinate with other agencies to initiate civil forfeiture proceedings against Chinese nationals accused of fraudulently obtaining Filipino citizenship to illegally acquire land and operate businesses in the Philippines.

In a statement, the quad committee said its proposal was aimed at safeguarding national security and halting foreign exploitation, citing the case of Aedy Tai Yang, a Chinese national suspected of falsifying documents to obtain Filipino citizenship.

The committee alleged that Yang used his falsified Filipino citizenship to circumvent foreign ownership laws in the Philippines, enabling him to illegally acquire land and establish businesses.

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The submitted documents to OSG include Yang's birth certificate, issued by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in 2004, despite his claim of being born in 1983.

"Records from the Municipal Civil Registry of San Antonio, Nueva Ecija, indicate that his birth documents were destroyed in a fire, casting doubt on the legitimacy of his citizenship claim," the quad comm said.

Additional evidence includes certifications from the PSA regarding Yang’s marriage, tax declarations for properties under his name, and corporate records associated with him, such as those from Empire 999 Realty Corporation and Sunflare Industrial Supply Corp., it said.

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These companies, the quad comm added, are linked to suspicious land acquisitions, with Land Registration Authority (LRA) records showing properties owned by the incorporators of Empire 999, which owned a warehouse in Mexico, Pampanga, where a shabu shipment worth P3.6 billion was seized in 2023. 

The committee also presented documents showing questionable land deals between Yang and the local government of Mexico, Pampanga, supported by Memorandums of Agreement, Deeds of Sale, and municipal resolutions that "bypassed" legal processes.

"The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has confirmed that some of the lands sold by Yang did not undergo the required conversion process, further highlighting the illegal nature of these transactions," it said.

The quad committee said it wrote a letter to Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra stressing the "national security risks posed by these activities, urging swift action."

"These actions are blatant violations of our laws and call for immediate executive intervention," the committee said.

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Assistant Solicitor Generals Hermes L. Ocampo and Gilbert U. Medrano and  Senior State Solicitor Neil Lorenzo received the documents from the quad comm leaders.

The quad committee called for the OSG to work with agencies such as the LRA, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), PSA, DAR, Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), and the Department of Justice (DOJ) "to ensure a thorough investigation and legal enforcement."

The committee said that failing to address the alleged violations "could have dire consequences for national security and the economy."

"We trust your office will prioritize this matter and act swiftly to protect the integrity of our nation’s legal and economic systems," the quad committee said.

The quad committee is investigating illegal POGOs, the drug trade, and extrajudicial killings linked to the Duterte administration’s war on drugs. 

It said Yang "has emerged as a central figure in these inquiries, representing what the committee views as a larger issue of foreign nationals exploiting legal loopholes to control land and businesses in the Philippines."

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