Former Mayor Edward Hagedorn (Facebook photo)
PALAWAN – Former Mayor Edward Hagedorn has strongly denied a claim made by a private lawyer working for certain organizations that he misdeclared his assets in his statement of assets and liabilities (SALN) in 2012.
Hagedorn vowed to file counter charges against a group led by a certain lawyer Berteni Causing who had filed a complaint before the Ombudsman a complaint for perjury and violation of the anti-graft act against him.
He claimed that the complainants deliberately misinterpreted his SALN for 2012 where he had declared all his assets including the land that had long been in his possession.
“They claimed that I only declared four properties. What they did not understand was that my SALN reflected the titles to all my property including 61 land titles with a market value of P102.5M,” Hagedorn said in a statement sent to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
“I don’t know this group but it appears they are either half nuts who did not know how to read a SALN properly or paid hacks merely to out to do character assassination,” Hagedorn said.
Causing had claimed that Hagedorn failed to declare ownership of some 133 hectares of land covered by 59 separate land titles.
Hagedorn on October 24 also distributed to reporters a copy of his 2012 SALN which included a summarized entry declaring ownership of some P102.5M worth of landholdings covered by a total of 61 titles.
“If he did his homework, he would have understood that the declared commercial/agricultural land property worth P131M was not a single title but was in fact covering not even for 59 land titles which he erroneously claimed but actually 61 land titles.
All he needed to look at was a related public document, which was the certification issued in March by the City Assessor’s Office,” Hagedorn said.
Hagedorn stressed that he did not declare only four properties as claimed by Causing’s group.
“I have always advocated for good government and I had truthfully filed my SALNs,” he said. “This is pure political harassment and I don’t care where their real intentions are but I’ve asked my lawyers to prepare a countersuit.”
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