News Briefs: July 1, 2019

Ex-Nueva Ecija lawmaker wants graft case junked

MANILA, Philippines — Former Nueva Ecija Rep. Aurelio Umali has asked the Sandiganbayan to dismiss his graft and malversation charges due to inordinate delay.

Umali, who allegedly misused his Priority Development Assistance Fund, said in his motion to dismiss that his right to the speedy disposition of his cases had been violated.

Umali noted that while the Ombudsman started preliminary investigation in 2008, state prosecutors only filed the charges against him in December 2016.

“It is evident that the accused Umali’s constitutionally guaranteed right to speedy disposition of the case was grossly violated by the inordinate delay in the conduct of preliminary investigation by the Office of the Ombudsman,” the motion said.

In the same motion, Umali said the longer the delay, the harder it would be for him to defend himself, since witnesses who he might call to corroborate his defense might no longer be available, or might no longer remember the events that occurred about 14 years ago. —Patricia Denise M. Chiu

VACC seeks replacement of PhilHealth’s IT officials

MANILA, Philippines — The Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) is demanding the resignation of the chief technical officer (CTO) and the chief information officer (CIO) of Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) for their failure to put in place a robust claims processing software engine and health care management system that would have prevented fraudulent transactions.

VACC president Arsenio Evangelista cited the testimony of Dr. Madeleine Valera, then PhilHealth vice president for health finance policy, before a 2007 congressional hearing that PhilHealth had lost as much as P4 billion due to fraudulent claims since 1995.

“It appeared that flawed information and technology systems that were put in place, plus greed, had been the real root cause of PhilHealth’s financial woes,” the VACC leader added. “The CTO and CIO must therefore tender their courtesy resignations in order to allow the incoming PhilHealth president to appoint his IT [information technology] experts to correct the obviously flawed claims processing system that has been put in place by these two PhilHealth officials,” he said.