Manila Times/San Leonardo, Nueva Ecija

It’s no ordinary house. This was the consensus reached by newsmen who were allowed to step inside the controversial house of Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Alan Purisima in this town yesterday.
“It may be an ordinary house by General Purisima’s standard. But to us, it’s a dream house,” remarked a reporter upon seeing the house in Barangay Magpapalayok.
Though not opulent, the house sitting on 204sq m, has five bedrooms —three downstairs and two at the attic. It is equipped with a CCTV and has a function hall.
Within the compound is a separate guesthouse with two bedrooms, a gazebo made from nipa and a swimming pool.
Purisima reportedly acquired the 4.5-hectare property from Leandro Gonzales 4th, owner of the Gonzales hospital in this town, in 1998.
The house was built in 2002 and renovated in 2012.
Tito Purisima, a cousin of the PNP chief, took members of the media around the property. Also present was PNP Public Information chief Senior Supt. Wilben Mayor.
“As reporters could see, this property is no mansion by any standard. It is an ordinary house, as ordinary as the other concrete houses that you would see in the neighbourhood,” the PNP chief said in a statement.
When he appeared at the Senate last week, Purisima said his resthouse was ordinary. After the Senate hearing, he invited media personnel to visit the house and judge for themselves whether it really was a mansion as some had claimed it to be.
Dante Jimenez, founding chairman of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC), said in an interview that while the group lauds Purisima’s move to allow the media inside his resthouse, it still wants to hear from Purisima himself what the real value of the entire property is.
Based on Purisima’s Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) in 2013, the property was valued at P3,750,000.
But Jimenez said nobody knows the true value of the property or how Purisima was able to acquire it with his income as a police officer.
Aside from the property in San Leonardo, Jimenez said Purisima also needs to explain why he kept the construction of the PNP’s chief’s residence in Camp Crame dubbed the ‘White House’ a secret.
The VACC is set to file a supplemental complaint at the Office of the Ombudsman against Purisima regarding his 200-hectare farm in Barangay Aulo in Palayan City, also in Nueva Ecija, which was not listed in his SALN.
GMA 7 reported about the 200-hectare farm but, according to the report, the City Assessor’s office of Palayan has no record that the PNP chief owns the property.
In a news conference last week, Purisima admitted owning the 200-hectare property but could not recall when he acquired it.