Transcripts of a February 8, 2017 meeting of the Guam Ancestral Lands Commission indicate the Office of the Attorney General of Guam and the GALC and Department of Land Management itself knew the government had indeed given away the property, where the Northern District Wastewater Treatment Plant sits. Present and participating in the meeting, aside from the commissioners, was an assistant attorney general and Gov. Eddie Calvo’s legal counsel, Sandra Miller. The greater part of the transcripted meeting shows a discussion about a Calvo-orchestrated attempt to take back the property and to seize frozen proceeds held in trust from former First Lady Geri Gutierrez, her sisters, and their families.

By the time of the meeting, the government of Guam had cast a shadow through several lawsuits on about one million square meters of land across Route 1 from the Micronesia Mall commonly known as the Harmon Annex, in Ukudu, Dededo. In 2006, the GALC under the Camacho administration had deeded the land to the estate of Jose Martinez Torres. Ms. Gutierrez and her sisters were the administratrixes of the land in question, and had sold the properties over the next two years to developer Younex Enterprises Corporation, owned by Yoon Kil-koo. Mr. Yoon began building housing for foreign workers ahead of the impending military buildup. The land subsequently was purchased by developer CoreTech International, Inc.

“The one that generated the $21 million already has a third owner,” then-GALC chairman Anthony “Sonny” Ada is quoted in the February 8, 2017 meeting transcripts as saying. “Remember when Attorney Ecube came to Ancestral Lands and said that Mr. Yoon was a bonafide third party purchaser, innocent, he didn’t know what was going on? Attorney Bischoff at the time said he bought the property in good faith. He didn’t know what was going on.”

‘Bischoff’ is former assistant attorney general Bill Bischoff, who was handling the land issue at the time. The reason this is significant is because 22 months after this meeting happened, where the OAG’s knowledge of the legitimate purchase was acknowledged, then-director of Land Management Michael Borja – who was present and participating in this meeting – sued CoreTech for the title to the property. And the OAG to this day is counsel of record for the government.

“The Commission can fight for those lots, but I don’t know if you still have it,” Ms. Miller, the governor’s legal counsel at the time, advised the commissioners in the meeting, according to the transcripts.

“The next question to our legal counsel, with all these cases what was in the ancestral land meeting, what was the direction to the Torres family and if that instruction that was in the minutes and the document that was signed, which prevailed?,” commissioner Antonio Sablan states on the record a few minutes later. “To me the one signed and recorded at land management prevails. Am I correct?”

Those documents are at the heart of CoreTech’s counterclaim to the Ukudu Lot 10108-6, or the NDWWTP property. According to the legal documents filed at DLM, the certificate of title was issued to Younex, and the deed of sale is in the name of CoreTech, meaning CoreTech is the legitimate owner of the property.

In response to Mr. Sablan’s question, a conversation ensues. Here is the transcript of that conversation:

Calvo administration and Guam Ancestral Lands Commissioners appear to conspire to circumvent Open Government Law

The remainder of the meeting, according to the transcript, was a tense argument, where two of the commissioners – Mr. Sablan and Louisa Wessling – protest closed-door meetings that circumvented the Open Government Law with Gov. Calvo, possible settlements discussed in private, and the former governor’s direction to the GALC and his cabinet and legal staff on what to do about the litigation.

Here is the transcript: