Pssssst, tax chief Kim Henares, you can take a virtual tour of Cong. Mikey Arroyo’s lovely California beach home

By Raissa Robles

I do so love your home in sunny California, Congressman Mikey. The one that Ellen Tordesillas, Avigail Olarte , Yvonne Chua and Luz Rimban wrote about in Vera Files two years ago.

To my utter delight, I found out today that anyone including Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares could still take a virtual tour of you and your wife Angela’s lovely other home at 1655 Beach Park Boulevard, Foster City, California. You listed it in your 2008 Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) under “Business Interest and Other Financial Connections.”

You did not declare this as part of your “Personal and Other Properties”.

Hmmmm, what’s the diff? I don’t know.

Of course I also don’t know if you’ve gotten rid of this property since. If you did, where did your earnings from the transaction go? To lovelier properties?

Do share.

Still, I took the virtual tour and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Take the magical tour through Mikey’s mansion

You, too, can take the tour. Take a peek at Mikey’s lovely choice of bathroom, master bedroom, kitchen, living room. What splendid taste.

Here’s the master bedroom:

 

Here’s his sala (living room):

At the end of this post, you can take the virtual tour of Mikey and Angela’s mansion and be transported to their world.

This is what a Congressional sectoral representative for tricycle drivers and security guards is able to afford. It gives the ordinary Filipino much hope and inspiration.

What a peaceful, restful home. So far from Manila’s maddening media demanding to know how you could afford a million dollar home on a half a million peso yearly income as congressman.

How your assets grew and grew

And mainly because back in 1993, your declared assets were worth a mere P50,000 (or the equivalent of US$1,157.41 (at the current forex rate of P43.20 per US$1). Even that was a handsome sum for a young buck of 24 just out of college.

But hey, your mom had just won her first ever elective post as senator of the Philippine Republic in 1992. Rather than earn oodles of money growing your own company, you opted to serve the people by joining your mom’s Senate staff.

You were therefore required by law to submit your first ever SALN. I’m sure you took the filing seriously. Hence in 1993 you declared you owned P50,000 which you listed under the item – “cash on hand/cash in bank”.

Life was beautiful. You had no liabilities (utang).

Now let’s jump to the year 2008 when your total assets (based on your December 2008 SALN) was listed at a whopping P150,253,644.95 (or US$3,478,093.63).

You’re a dollar millionaire now. Wow. Gosh. How’d you do that?

Let’s see now –

1993 – you worked with mom – P50,000in  assets. Net worth same due to zero liabilities.

1994 – still worked with mom – P320,000 in assets (of which P120,000 was cash and P200,000 personal effects,). Net worth was also P320,000 because of zero liabilities.

Then your assets paper trail disappeared. You must have taken some time off. From 1996 to 1997, you studied Business Administration at the University of California in Berkeley, you once told me in a 2005 one-on-one interview.

The next time your SALN surfaced was in 2001 when you got elected provincial vice-governor of Pampanga.

You also tried breaking into the movie business, appearing in mostly bit or supporting roles and a few lead roles.

By 2001,  your P320,000 assets had grown to P5,721,787.29, broken down as follows:

P3,327,686.12 in cash
P2,144,101.17 in shares of stock
P250,000 worth of personal effects
With zero liabilities, your net worth was the same as your assets.

It took you only four years (excluding time off for a Berkeley education) for you to earn P5 million. Cool.

Hmmm, must study in Berkeley

Now let’s do a quick rundown of your total assets’ amazing growth, all based on your available SALN:

1993 – P50,000 – zero liabilities
1994 – P320,000 – zero liabilities
2001 – P5,721,787.29 – zero liabilities
2002 – P5.003 million – zero liabilities
2004 – P76,531,403.96 – zero liabilities
2005 – P138,751,403.96 – P61.8 million liabilities
2006 – P167,971,403.96 – P78.4 million liabilities
2007 – P154,972,409.95 – P58,224,476.29 liabilities
2008 – P156,122,409.90 – P56,874,476.20 liabilities

The biggest jump in your assets (by roughly P71 million) was between 2002 and 2004 when you were Pampanga vice-governor.

Could it have been due to your budding movie career? But it wasn’t that great, according to well-known entertainment columnist Ricky Lo who wrote after interviewing you in July 2003:

As an actor, he’s tagged as a “TH” (as in Trying Hard) and critics of GMA (your mom) and her administration had a field day poking fun at Mikey and his mom (poor GMA!) when his starrer called Di Kita Ma-Reach finished at the tail end of the Metro Manila Film Festival three years ago.

In 2002, you married your second cousin, Maria Angela. Perhaps she brought in the fortune?

It pays to marry rich?

Last year you listed the divine Angela as a board director in five companies owned and run by her family years before you two got married. These are:

• H.M. Montenegro Co. Inc
• Pacific Activated Carbon Co. Inc
• Pacific Activated Carbon Co. Intl.
• Titan Megatiles Industrial Corp
• Titan Mega Bags Industrial Corp.

A quick check with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows most of these companies were in bad shape.

H.M. Montenegro Co. Inc, also listed as H.M. Montenegro and Asso. Inc., is the holding company for eight family-owned firms.

Two of the companies earned modest amounts:

Titan Mega Bags Industrial Corporation’s last financial statement was for the year 2000: listing P576 million in assets. But its net operating income before tax that year was a negative P5.55 million. “Other income” raised this to P24.3 million.

The last financial statement filed by Titan Megatiles Industrial Corp was for 2002 when it declared operational losses of P7.988 million. But earnings outside operations gave it a P6.48 million net income.

Pacific Activated Carbon Co., Inc earned a net income of P30.6 million in 2002.

Staggering growth in personal assets

Again between 2004 and 2005, your assets grew by some P62 million –  or from P76.5 million to P138.75 million.

In 2004 you got elected Pampanga congressman for the first time.

But there’s more

In 2005, according to Vera Files, you sold a condominium in California for US$900,000 – something that wasn’t disclosed in your 2004 SALN.

The following year, California land records showed you transferring THE LOVELY BEACH PARK property to your wife’s name. Lucky wife.

Below is a copy of the real estate details of Beach Front which someone else passed on to me:

And so your conjugal assets kept growing

Let’s assume this jump in assets was due to borrowings and not to kickbacks from the illegal gambling game jueteng – which you were accused of in 2005. Which you told me was a lie.

You said then:

When you are the incumbent president’s son, many sectors want to see you fail rather than succeed. Oppositors to my mom, if they can’t hit her they hit me.

When Vera Files came out with its expose in 2009 you attributed malice, ignorance and recklessness to Ellen, Yvonne,Avigail and Luz. You said they never called you. But they said you refused to answer their mobile text messages and calls.

I’ve covered beats with Ellen and Yvonne and I know how they can be very persistent in nailing stories. In fact your mom, President Arroyo, held the same positive opinion back in October 2000 when she was being asked if she would pursue criminal charges against then President Joseph Estrada if he resigned.

She replied:

Right now I’m already hearing many suggestions about that. Neal Cruz has his suggestions. Ellen Tordesillas keeps asking me about that with very suggestive questions….So I’m listening to the consensus that’s being formulated.

In 2008 you declared debts worth P56,874,476.20

Let’s just do some mental exercise. If we assume you had to pay 8% yearly interest on that, you would have to shell out P4.55 million in interest payments only for that year. No problem. You had P51.6 million in cash.

Never mind if as a legislator you only earned P420,000 a year in 2008.

Do tell how you managed to generate all that cash that has enabled you to afford all at the same time –

• your debt,
• the building of  your mansion in La Vista, Quezon City,
• the purchase of a million dollar property in California
• while still maintaining a lavish lifestyle.

I even heard one of your government-paid bodyguards had the job of making sure your Phillipe Patek watch would not be snatched from your wrist. I haven’t verified that. Perhaps you could.

Is it like this one below?

But here’s the thing, your parents declared in 2008 assets worth P171.843 million pesos after nearly a lifetime of working.

How did you manage to nearly equal their worth in just 15 years without ever being a corporate CEO?

Yeah, you are of course the president of Mikey’s Horseman Bar and Grill Inc starting in 2006. That must be a lot of barbecue you grilled.

You’ve beaten all the odds. And so I wanna know. Please, please, I wanna know how you did it.

To inspire everyone else about the immense possibilities of growing rich in a developing country like the Philippines, let’s take a virtual tour of Mikey and Angela’s purchased mansion.

Click on this link.

Enjoy.

____________________

Here’s a brief bio of Congressman Juan Miguel Arroyo

April 26, 1969 – date of birth
Education – Ateneo de Manila University all the way. Yeah, as a rewrite of the the school motto says –  “to receive without counting the costs.”

1993-1995 – Mikey is mom’s aide at her Senate office
1995 – starts showbiz career doing bit parts. By 1998, racked up 5 movies as second lead and one starring role
1996-1997 – studied Business Administration at University of California in Berkeley
2001-2004 – elected Vice Governor, Pampanga; sudden asset jump by P71 million
2002 – married Maria Angela Montenegro
2003 – Philippine Star entertainment columnist Ricky Lo said Mikey was “trying hard” as an actor
2004– to present – elected Congressman
2005 – accused of receiving jueteng payoffs but denies it; another asset jump
2006 – registered California Beach Boulevard property under wife’s name
2008 – declared beach property as holdings of a California company where he claimed to own shares but didn’t say how much

2010 – wins seat representing a poor sector

2011 – Mikey and wifey are accused of tax evasion.

Wadda. Where did THAT canard come from????