COA checking lawmakers’ deals with Napoles
Alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim Napoles INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—The Commission on Audit (COA) is looking into business deals with lawmakers disclosed by alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles in her so-called expanded affidavit to see if they bear out.
“We’re validating [them] against our records,” COA Chair Maria Gracia Pulido-Tan told reporters in an interview at the Supreme Court after she was interviewed by the Judicial and Bar Council on Friday.
Tan was replying to a question about the special allotment release orders mentioned in Napoles’ affidavit, which was submitted to the Department of Justice and to the Senate blue ribbon committee.
The alleged transactions also appear in the digital files of pork barrel scam whistle-blower Benhur Luy the contents of which the Inquirer published over two weeks earlier this month.
Napoles, Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr. and several former members of the House of Representatives and former government officials are facing plunder charges for diverting P10 billion in allocations from the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) to ghost projects over a period of 10 years up to 2012.
Expanded list
Initially, Napoles denied knowing anything about the scam but changed her mind, and last month, before undergoing surgery for the removal of her uterus and ovaries, she asked Justice Secretary Leila de Lima for immunity in exchange for a full disclosure of her PDAF dealings with lawmakers.
Napoles submitted a list containing the names of 11 senators, which she expanded in an affidavit to add more legislators’ names, some of which did not appear in Luy’s files.
“If you notice, her affidavit is is connection with the cases [about PDAF] filed against her in the Ombudsman. So all we need to do is to give our take on it to the Ombudsman,” Tan said.
PDAF probe
The Ombudsman, the COA and the justice department form the Inter-Agency Anti-Graft Coordinating Council that is tasked with investigating the misuse of the PDAF, prosecuting those who have misused it and recovering the money.
Tan also said the COA could still look into the PDAF transactions detailed by Napoles even if the agency’s audit report covered only the years 2007 to 2009.
“That’s possible. We have not yet placed the time frame [Napoles] provided. Remember our PDAF report is 2007 to 2009. Now, if she mentioned some things that took place in 2010 and [later], we can still check it out because we have audits from 2010 to the present on the PDAF,” she said.
Earlier deals
Asked about PDAF transactions before 2007, Tan said she did not know if those deals had been audited. But this did not mean the government could not hold Napoles accountable for those transactions, she said.
“Maybe there are some [audit reports] lurking somewhere,” said Tan, who was appointed to the COA in April 2011.
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