SUMMARY
This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.
Claim: Congressman Francisco Cachuela, supposedly a former Liberal Party member from Tacloban City, bought a posh P22-M mansion in Alabang, Muntinlupa City 4 years after Super Typhoon Yolanda using rehabilitation funds.
Cachuela was supposedly a “party list representative” from “Waray Waray” party list who then joined the Liberal Party (LP). He supposedly served from 2010 to 2013 under LP, but lost his reelection bid.
A lawyer named Arturo Braganza, a spokesperson of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC), supposedly pointed out the issue. He said that Cachuela “has no means” to buy the said property “based only on his income as a livestock trader.”
The blog phnewspride.blogspot.com in their August 5 post ran the headline, “Four Years after Yolanda, Ex-LP Solon Buys ₱22M Mansion in Alabang.”
The post has been shared 4 times in different Facebook pages and groups. All of these accounted to a combined total of 317 interactions and 283,952 followers.
The claim has been posted as early as March 2017 by 5 blogs namely realspotnews.info, aramco.netviral.com, dutertenewsglobal.info, pinoybuzzfeed.com, and dailybuzzph.com
The 2017 posts did not mention the name the alleged congressman.
Rating: FALSE
The facts: There is no Congressman Francisco Cachuela. There is also no Arturo Braganza in the Supreme Court’s list of lawyers.
Cachuela’s name is not in the list of district representatives for the 15th Congress which is featured in the website of the House of Representatives. Comelec records show that nobody by the name of Francisco Cachuela ran in 2010 and won as representative for the 1st district of Leyte, which includes Tacloban City.
It is Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, a member of Lakas-CMD, who held that position from 2007 to 2013.
Meanwhile, there is also no Arturo Braganza in the roll of attorneys in the Supreme Court’s website.
The post described Cachuela as joining the Liberal Party after his party list Waray Waray lost in the 2010 elections. No party named “Waray Waray” was listed for the 2010 elections, Comelec records show.
However, there is an An Waray party list which is based in the islands of Leyte, Samar and Biliran. They held 2 seats in 2010, 2 in 2013, and 1 in 2016.
As for the embedded photo of the supposed Alabang mansion, a Google reverse image search shows the photo used is a thumbnail of two results from photo-suit.com.
The image of the house in the 2018 post is different from the 2017 posts. Running the image through reverse image search also shows results as photographs of different suburbs. It also shows the pinoybuzzfeed.com and dailybuzzph.com posts.
The post also said that Oxfam International and World Health Organization (WHO) “recently released” a report that “more than 60% of the donations to Typhoon Haiyan victims were lost and wasted.” Oxfam confirmed to Rappler that there was “no such report published” by the organization.
The blog phnewspride.blogspot.com was also responsible for posting a death hoax of Jet Li. And typical of shady blogs that Rappler has checked, the blog does not have authors, company profile, editorial board, or contact details. — Miguel Imperial and Michael Bueza/Rappler.com
If you suspect a Facebook page, group, account, a website, or an article is spreading false information, let Rappler know by contacting us at factcheck@rappler.com. Let us battle disinformation one Fact Check at a time.
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