Japanese charged with negligence in housing collapse

Asian Economic News, March 6, 2000

MANILA, March 1 Kyodo

The Philippine prosecution filed a criminal suit Wednesday against a Japanese real estate developer and his five Filipino associates over a 1999 housing collapse that claimed the lives of 58 people.

A three-man panel formed by the Justice Department found Philippine Japan Solidarity Corp. (Philjas), a real estate firm, and its executives liable for the disaster.

The panel said, "The proximate cause of the tragedy" was "gross negligence in the construction, development and implementation of the Cherry Hills (real estate) project" on the part of the company's executives.

"There is sufficient evidence showing that respondents proceeded to develop and continued to develop the Cherry Hills (real estate) without due regard to the pertinent laws, rules and regulations and to the safety of the lives and property of the unit buyers and occupants," the panel said.

At least 400 houses in the Cherry Hills estate in San Luis village in the city of Antipolo near Manila collapsed Aug. 3, 1999, after days of heavy rain, reducing concrete houses into rubble and burying many residents alive.

Prosecutors filed the charges with the Antipolo Metropolitan Regional Trial Court against Hiroshi Ogawa, the Japanese general manager and treasurer of Philjas, accusing him of "reckless imprudence resulting in multiple homicide, serious physical injuries and damage to property."

Also charged were five Filipino executives of Philjas -- Tirso Santillan, president, Eliezer Rodriguez, assistant general manager, Virgilio Garcia, project superintendent, and engineers Sixto Caday and Timoteo Layos.

The prosecutors also recommended to the court to order the real estate firm to pay families of the victims a sum of 166 million pesos ($4.2 million) in damages.

The Justice Department panel led by Assistant Chief State Prosecutor Lualhati Buenafe recommended a bail of 10,000 pesos ($250) for each of the accused.

If convicted, they face a jail term of two to four years.

Ogawa and his associates have said the tragedy was an act of God, but the prosecution panel said "the rainstorms may have merely contributed" to the accident.

Kyodo News tried but failed to get a statement from company executives.