Sarmiento lawyer on Seven Seas: ‘DENR filed CA case years after ruling’

By NITZ ARANCON
Correspondent .

THE lawyer of the Sarmiento firm that sold the Barra, Opol property where Seven Seas Waterpark and Resort now stands said it took the environment department years — or exactly the same year the theme park was opened — to question the decision of a regional court on the case for reversion and cancellation of land title.

Lawyer Francis Khu said the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) filed a case for annulment of the regional court’s judgment only last year or some five years after the 17th branch of the Regional Trial Court ruled in favor of the Sarmiento-owned LS Property Inc..

The DENR kept mum on the regional court’s decision for years until recently when it showed renewed interest on the property again by assailing the judicial titling and asserting that the property, including the multimillion-peso theme park, is a “timberland.”

After it secured a land title, the Sarmientos sold some 20 hectares of the 59-hectare property to various buyers, including Engr. Elpidio Paras, president of UC-1 Corp. that operates Seven Seas, who bought some five hectares (not the entire 20 hectares as reported earlier).

“Nakatotok lang ni karon nga issue ni Paras tungod anang Seven Seas,” he said.

Khu said there is an “intervenor” in the case against the Sarmientos, a group he identified as “Tricap.”

Tricap stands for Tribal Community Association of the Philippines that has reportedly claimed the Sarmiento property, including Paras’s theme park, as part of an ancestral domain.

Jomorito Goaynon, chairman of the lumad group Kalumbay, said Tricap is an organization with questionable activities and known to him to have allegedly victimized tribal communities, including groups associated with Kalumbay.

Kalumbay is a federation of lumad groups in northern Mindanao.

“NGO man kana sila nga ga ‘organize-organize’ kunohay sa mga lumad. Wala’y lumad nila nga membro ana. Mag-adto na sila’g mga tribal communities daw mag-offer og mga ‘project-project’ nga dili makabenepisyo sa mga lumad nga ila kunohay gi-organize,” Goaynon said.

Maximo Seno, the mayor of Opol town, earlier accused the DENR of allowing itself to be used by an organization that claims to be representing indigenes for an alleged extortion scheme. He did not identify any group but only referred to it as “tribal-tribal.”

Seno said the group allegedly attempted to illegally occupy the Barra property and then asked the Sarmientos to give it one hectare after it lost its case in the regional court. The Sarmientos, according to Seno, flatly rejected what the group asked for and so, it is now focused on the Parases.