Budget chief Abad slapped with plunder complaint
Budget Secretary Florencio Abad INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—Party-list groups Kabataan Partylist and Youth Act Now! on Tuesday filed a complaint for plunder before the Office of the Ombudsman against Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad, the so-called ‘architect’ of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), parts of which were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court last week.
In a 16-page complaint-affidavit, the group said Abad “systematically misappropriated, converted, misused, and malversed public funds through the (DAP).”
“We are executing the instant complaint affidavit in order to charge the Respondent for violation of R.A. No. 7080 or, in the alternative, the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, and the Revised Penal Code,” the petitioners said.
They said all elements of plunder exist in the case when he initiated the DAP.
“The respondent systematically misappropriated, converted, misused, and malversed public funds through his executive issuances and the programs implemented by him as Secretary of the Department of Budget and Management,” the petitioners explained.
The complaint came after the Supreme Court decision that struck down the DAP. The Supreme Court ruled that implementors, proponents and authors of DAP are liable unless they can prove that their act was done in good faith.
The complainants said Abad cannot claim “good faith” or “ignorance of the law” in committing illegal acts through the implementation of DAP.
The petitioners cited portions of Associate Justice Arturo Brion’s separate opinion on the DAP wherein the senior justice stated, “it is not hard to believe that [Abad] can run circles around the budget and its processes, and did, in fact, purposely use this knowledge for the administration’s objective of gathering the very sizeable funds collected under the DAP.”
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