Midas Marquez denies impropriety, hits Palace

Supreme Court spokesperson Jose Midas Marquez INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Supreme Court Administrator Jose Midas Marquez on Sunday denied allegations of irregularities in the use of the $21-million World Bank (WB) loan granted to the judiciary and slammed Malacañang for its “imprudent” leak of an aide-mémoire.

Marquez described the disclosure of the aide-mémoire as “highly malicious and reprehensible,” timed as it was for the start of Chief Justice Renato Corona’s impeachment trial.

He also assailed Palace spokesperson Edwin Lacierda for coming out with a briefer on the WB aide-mémoire, saying that the move may have been “ill-advised.”

Parrying insinuations of irregularities, Marquez on Sunday said Lacierda should not have put the informal memorandum on the government’s website.

The World Bank had said that it did not release an official copy of the aide-mémoire, an internal and informal memorandum tagged for Official Use Only.

In an e-mailed statement, Marquez said the “premature and unauthorized disclosure” was maliciously timed with the start of the impeachment trial and was even accompanied by a “slanted interpretative summary” of the WB’s review of the loan. It was “surreptitiously” made public through the e-mail address [email protected].

Said Marquez: “(T)he posting of an interpretative summary of the aide-mémoire entitled  ‘A Briefer on the World Bank Judicial Reform Support Project (Loan)’ by (Lacierda) on the website of the Office of the President may be ill-advised.”

Project monitoring

Marquez, the concurrent court spokesperson, said Matthew Stephens, acting country director of the WB, told the high court in a letter dated Dec. 28, 2011, that the aide-mémoire was “classified as ‘Official Use Only’ for the purpose of project monitoring and management, and will not be disclosed to the public.”

The report, made during the period Oct. 24-Nov. 12, 2011, raised questions regarding procurements and disbursements in the Supreme Court in connection with the Judicial Reform Support Project (JRSP).

Financed partly with a $21.9-million (about P930 million) loan from the WB, the JRSP project aimed to boost efficiency in the dispensation of justice in the country.

Marquez said Stephens had also stated that some contents of the report “are still to be confirmed.”

In fact, Marquez said, the copy of the aide-mémoire which circulated in the Internet noted that the WB was still requesting the tribunal’s Project Management Office (PMO) “to please point out any errors or omissions in the list of ineligible expenditures.”

“In fine, the current aide-mémoire is still confidential and the findings therein have yet to be confirmed,” he said, adding: “As such, the contents of the aide-mémoire are unmistakably preliminary in nature, and are yet to be finalized after the representatives of the court and the (World) Bank have deliberated on the matters included therein, as is usually the process following a regular periodic review of the project.”

Not disclosed to public

He said the WB issued a statement reiterating that such a report was “usually not disclosed to the public.”

In the aide-mémoire, the WB had questioned Corona’s decision to designate one man as court administrator, head of the Public Information Office and chair of the Bids and Awards Committee said it only weakened the internal auditing system of the high court.

While it did not identify Marquez, the WB said it was the court administrator who was authorized to approve, on Corona’s behalf, payments of up to P200,000, which was later increased to P500,000.

Division of duties

The bank said that a “lack of appropriate segregation of duties of key officials involved in the JRSP has created a breakdown of the control environment, increased fiduciary and reputation risks, and led to irregular/inappropriate procurement and expenditure decisions.”

Because of this setup, it said that “this senior official, due to the combination of his appointments and functions, was the requestor of the services, the approver of the terms of reference, the end-user of the services provided by the firm, the authorizer of contract extensions, and the authorizer of payments to the firm.”

Marquez said the aide-mémoire mentioned $199,900 worth of financial transactions which the WB classified as “ineligible,” representing “only 0.75 percent of the loan.”

He said $147,159 of the questioned expenditures covered the acquisition of computer equipment for the courts and $22,338 for the printing of case digests for the judges.

According to Marquez, the funds were used in support of the high court’s goal to improve case adjudications and access to justice, enhance institutional integrity, strengthen institutional capacity and support for the reform of the judicial system and for the PMO.

“The remainder of the supposed ‘ineligibles’ has already been validly charged to the proper funding source, even before the (World Bank) monitoring team arrived and should not have been included at all in the aide-mémoire,” he said.

He said the high court was already “addressing the issues and concerns” mentioned in the aide-mémoire “with utmost adherence to the strict guidelines” of the World Bank.

“Rest assured that the court has been and continuous to be transparent and vigilant in its financial affairs,” he said.