Witnesses on Wednesday pointed to Budget Undersecretary Amenah Pangandaman as the official who ordered the addition of P75 billion worth of projects to the 2019 budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) without the knowledge of the agency.
DPWH employees who testified during the resumption of the House of Representatives inquiry into the unrequested funds said Pangandaman summoned them to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) central office on July 11 last year for “encoding” and “reformatting” of projects for inclusion in the National Expenditure Program (NEP).
Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr., the appropriations committee chair, said it was clear from the testimonies of the witnesses that Pangandaman was the “puppet master of all this charade.”
Andaya earlier accused Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno as the authority behind the DPWH bonanza.
House inquiry
Diokno denied the accusation, but the House proceeded to investigate to trace the source of the P75-billion addition to the DPWH budget in the P3.8-trillion proposed national budget for 2019.
A controversy that followed the discovery and Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s earlier disclosure of billions of pesos in pork embedded in the draft spending program delayed approval of the 2019 budget, forcing the administration of President Duterte to operate on a reenacted financial plan for 2018.
In her testimony, Milagros Manaysay, DPWH division chief for programming, testified that the P75 billion was not part of the agency’s budget submission to the DBM for inclusion in the 2019 spending program.
An employee in Manaysay’s office, Glenn Degal, said it was Pangandaman who gave him the list of projects, and ordered him to make the “reformatting.”
Degal said Pangandaman phoned him on July 11 and instructed him to go to the DBM central office, where a staff member gave him a thumb drive that contained files of projects worth P51 billion.
He said he was instructed to “reformat” the spreadsheet files from the DBM to make them conform to the DPWH template of projects lined up for funding.
Degal then turned over the thumb drive to a colleague, identified as Froilan Mabini, to do the “reformatting.”
Consolidation
According to Mabini, he modified the listing, and added other details as required by the DPWH template.
Another DPWH employee, Gerard Longoria, said he “consolidated” the P51 billion worth of projects with projects worth more than P23 billion, completing the P75-billion insertion.
Longoria said he worked overnight on July 12 and delivered the updated project listing to Ellen Tumang, who was waiting at the DBM central office in Manila, around 4 a.m.
There was no immediate comment from Pangandaman on Wednesday.
Public Works Secretary Mark Villar earlier said he learned about the P75-billion addition to his department’s budget when he saw the proposed NEP.
The House members on Wednesday grilled representatives of CT Leoncio Construction and Trading and Land Bank of the Philippines on the alleged irregular award of contracts and payment of “royalties” to Aremar Construction Corp., which Andaya had described as a dummy construction company of relatives of Diokno.
The lawmakers threatened to file perjury charges against Francis Clemente, CT Leoncio’s liaison officer, for giving conflicting statements when pressed about 36 projects for the Bicol region, worth about P2 billion, that his company allegedly cornered in 2018.
Bank secrecy
Andaya was miffed at the silence of Leonora Arriola, branch manager of Landbank in Sorsogon City, about her failure to report to the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) the payments made to Aremar Construction.
Under the antimoney laundering law, bank transactions at least P500,000 must be reported to the AMLC.
Arriola declined to answer the lawmakers’ questions, repeatedly invoking the prohibition of disclosure under the bank secrecy law.
The lawmakers said they would summon Pangandaman, officials of the AMLC and the owners of CT Leoncio to the resumption of the hearing on Friday.