Hope further dims for the Maliti family

Hopes of getting paid $3.35 million for the property taken from them in 1978 further dimmed for the Maliti family after the Commonwealth Development Authority returned the drawdown requested by the Marianas Public Lands Authority to settle the claimants’ land compensation.

The Maliti family members are heirs of the former owner of the Marianas High School land.

In a Nov. 15 letter, CDA chair Sixto Igisomar said his office is returning MPLA’s requisition based on the legal issues raised by the Attorney General’s Office regarding the drawdown request.

Igisomar told MPLA commissioner Edward Deleon Guerrero that these issues should be resolved with the AGO before the requested drawdown could be disbursed by the bond trustee, which is Bank of Guam.

“[CDA] therefore believes that Requisition No. FY 05-01 should not be forwarded to the Trust Department, Bank of Guam, for payment until the Office of Attorney General officially confirms that all relevant legal issues have been properly resolved. In view of the foregoing, CDA hereby returns the original of Requisition No. FY 05-01,” Igisomar said.

He added, “Furthermore…the Bond Trustee is hereby advised not to make any disbursement from the Land Compensation Fund pursuant to such requisition until further notice from CDA.”

In an interview, Igisomar said he feels for the land claimants, the Maliti family.

However, he said the issues raised by the AGO are facts that CDA cannot simply ignore. He also noted that the AGO is the last agency to review the documents before the money will be released. In other words, even if CDA authorizes the drawdown, the AGO could ultimately stop the money from being released to the claimants. If that happens, he said, the money will not be cashed and will merely remain with MPLA.

“CDA is just trying to solve the issue before it gets to that. I truly hope that the problem will be resolved immediately to prevent further costs from being incurred by the claimants, the CNMI government and the MPLA itself,” Igisomar said.

With this move, CDA made good on its Nov. 10 letter to assistant attorney general Benjamin Sachs that CDA will withhold the processing of the drawdown request if any of its conditions are met. Sachs had said the payment of the land compensation might be illegal for various reasons.

The conditions are: (1) a letter from the attorney general, or acting attorney general indicating that the AGO stands behind Sachs’ legal assessment as set forth in his Nov. 8 letter; (2) an order from the CNMI Superior Court enjoining the further processing of the requisition; and (3) a letter from the Finance secretary withdrawing the transmittal and approval of the requisition.

Acting attorney general Clyde Lemons Jr. concurred with Sachs’ legal opinion on Nov. 12, thereby satisfying one of CDA’s three conditions.

Without Lemons’ concurrence, the requisition would have been forwarded to Bank of Guam at 4pm yesterday.

The $3.4 million drawdown was requested for the benefit of the heirs of Angel Maliti, who owned a 6,900-sq.m. property that the Trust Territory government condemned for the purpose of constructing what is now Marianas High School.

On Nov. 9, 1978, the court awarded $3,682.30 to the Maliti family as its compensation for the condemned land.

The government says it issued a check to pay a portion of the award. It is not known if the check was paid to the Maliti family. The heirs claim they never received any amount from the government.

Last September, the MPLA board of directors approved the payment of $3.45 million as land compensation to the Maliti heirs. The amount was based on an appraisal conducted in the early 1990s, when the value of Saipan real estate was very high.

The board said $3.45 million was a fair amount, given the length of time that the family has waited for compensation. The board also maintained that the government, not the Maliti family, was at fault as to why the payment took too long.

Pursuant to this decision, the MPLA made a requisition, requesting the $3.45 million drawdown from the Land Compensation Fund. The request has been approved by the Finance secretary, and now awaits processing at CDA.

But in a Nov. 8, 2004 letter to CDA’s attorney, assistant attorney general Sachs asked the authority to wait before paying out the requisition to allow Finance and MPLA to consider legal and other issues concerning the payment.

“Please note the huge discrepancy between the amount of the 1978 judgment [$3,682.30] and the requisition amount [$3,450,000]. With 9-percent judgment interest, even if compounded annually, on $3,682.30, the total amount would be about $34,610.52, rather than the amount that MPLA is now trying to pay,” Sachs noted.

He also cited at least two statutes rendering illegal the payment at this time of land compensation to the Maliti Estate.