Senate panel orders Pharmally’s Ong, Mohit Dargani detained in Pasay City Jail
MANILA, Philippines — The Senate blue ribbon committee ordered the detention of Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp. executives Mohit Dargani and Linconn Ong at the Pasay City Jail for failing again to provide the necessary documents needed for the investigation.
During Friday’s hearing, committee chair and Senator Richard Gordon entertained the motion from Senator Francis Pangilinan to place Dargani and Ong under the Pasay City Jail’s custody after they insisted that they do not know where the box containing Pharmally’s financial documents is right now.
Pharmally is still being probed by the blue ribbon committee for the government’s allegedly anomalous purchase of pandemic supplies from the company.
“The motion of Senator Pangilinan has been ruled and is properly seconded, there are no objections. So we will send Mr. Dargani and Mr. Ong, because they are not cooperating, they think they can talk their way out of this by lying through this, I’d rather bring them over to the Pasay City Jail,” Gordon said.
Prior to Gordon’s order, both were detained at the Senate complex after being cited in contempt for being evasive in the case of Ong, and for not attending the hearings, for Dargani.
Dargani’s sister Twinkle who is also detained at the Senate was supposed to be sent to the Correctional Institute for Women at Mandaluyong, but Gordon spared her as he believes that she was duped by her brother into handling Pharmally.
Gordon suggested that Twinkle be admitted at the National Center for Mental Health after she was reportedly facing mental health issues, but she said that her doctor can visit her at the Senate.
Talk about the box containing the financial documents have been persisting in recent hearings, as senators believe it is key to the investigation of Pharmally’s role in the pandemic supply procurement done by the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM).
Pharmally remains at the center of the Senate’s investigation on the deficiencies in DOH’s COVID-19 funds amounting to P67.32 billion.
This was after the revelation that over P8.6 billion of the funds transferred by DOH to the procuring entities like PS-DBM went to the company, despite it having a small paid-up capital of P625,000.
There are also accusations that Pharmally’s equipment were overpriced, like in the case of face masks sold at over P27 per piece in April 2020, when other companies offered a price of P13 per piece.
READ: P8.7-B med supply deals went to tiny company
