Sen.. Sherwin Gatchalian (File photo from the Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau)
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian on Sunday said the Philippine Gaming and Amusement Corp. (Pagcor) should immediately rescind the contract it awarded to a shady private consortium after a New York-based bank denied providing a document that it presented to secure the P6-billion government project.
Gatchalian, chair of the Senate ways and means committee, said Soleil Chartered Bank (SCB) sent a letter on Feb. 13 informing him that it did not issue a certificate to Global ComRCI that supposedly showed that it had $25 million in bank deposits.
Global used the bank certification to bag the lucrative service contract as Pagcor’s third-party auditor to examine the earnings of Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs).
“The contract between Pagcor and Global ComRCI should be terminated immediately,” said Gatchalian, who has led the Senate inquiry into the tax revenues from POGOs.
“It’s clear that the bank guarantee submitted by Pagcor’s third-party contractor was fake. Because of this, the declared revenues of POGOs are suspicious since the audit process has no credibility,” he said.
Not a bank
According to the senator, SCB clarified that Global was not among its clients and that it did not issue a certification dated June 15, 2017, supposedly proving that it had deposits with the bank.
Gatchalian said the spurious document was the same certification that Pagcor had presented during the Senate hearing last month.
He previously blasted officials of the state gaming regulator as they were “tricked or allowed yourselves to be tricked” by Global, which was found to have submitted several bogus documents.
“The letter I received from [SCB] was signed by Govind Srivastava and Balwinder Kaur. But if we look back on our past hearings, the bank guarantee from [SCB] that was presented by Pagcor was also signed by Govind Srivastava,” Gatchalian noted.
SCB also informed Gatchalian that “it does not engage in banking business, it does not have an office in the Philippines and its supposed office address in the Philippines is spurious.”
“We trust that this matter has been clarified and hope that whoever may have committed this forgery will be dealt with accordingly in the proper court of law,” SCB told the senator.
Gatchalian already filed a resolution urging the Senate blue ribbon committee to conduct a separate inquiry into the 10-year contract that Pagcor awarded to Global during the Duterte administration.
3 years running
Roderick Consolacion, vice president for legal affairs of Pagcor, earlier said that the discovery of the irregularities allegedly committed by Global was enough reason to terminate the agreement.
He said the state regulator already paid a total of P824 million to Global, but Pagcor demanded a refund of about P435 million due to the private firm’s failure to satisfy its performance threshold.
“We are reviewing the contract based on the information we received [from you] because it has also been three straight years that they have not surpassed the threshold,” Consolacion told Gatchalian during the Senate hearing on Jan. 24.