Marcoleta: Garcia to file ethics case vs me? No problem

Sagip party-list Rep. Rodante Marcoleta holds another press briefing on issues hounding Comelec and its automated election system provider on August 1, 2024. GABRIEL PABICO LALU/INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines — Sagip party-list Rep. Rodante Marcoleta sees no problem if Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairperson George Garcia decides to file an ethics complaint against him.

Marcoleta said the poll chief could do as he wished if he felt he had sufficient grounds to support an ethics case.

However, Marcoleta also said he could not understand why he was being targeted when he only wanted clean elections.

“If he has grounds to file an ethics complaint, if he thinks what he would do is correct, we are in a democracy, why doesn’t he do it? Is it a sin that I saw a way for us to prove that the accounts existed?” Marcoleta said in Filipino in an ambush interview Thursday, on the sidelines of the budget hearings at the House of Representatives.

READ: Marcoleta tags Comelec chief Garcia in Caymans offshore bank controversy

“So somebody deposited money in those two remaining opened accounts.  It just so happened the accounts were under his name. So why am I being accused of doing a demolition job? Am I trying to demolish the Comelec? The Comelec is an independent constitutional body. We should protect the Comelec, and I also said we should protect our national elections,” he added.

READ: Comelec’s Garcia traces offshore bank transactions to Smartmatic

The spat between Marcoleta and Garcia stemmed from the lawmaker’s allegations that a Comelec official’s alleged offshore accounts received P1 billion worth of deposits that coincided with the poll body’s procurement of its automated election system (AES).

The lawmaker did not name the Comelec official but Garcia came out and admitted that it was him being alluded to by Marcoleta – although all alleged foreign bank accounts are fake, he added.

Asked if he is confident that an ethics complaint against him on this issue would not fly, Marcoleta said he did not know what Garcia’s basis for filing such a case.

“I have not seen what his grounds were,” Marcoleta said.

Under current procedures, individuals can file complaints against sitting members of the House of Representatives before the committee on ethics and privileges.

Last May, the committee received three ethics complaints against Davao del Norte 1st District Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez. The panel eventually tackled the complaints and submitted them to the committee on rules for deliberation.

Thereafter, the committee report will be discussed at the plenary, and members will vote nominally on whether the recommendation from the ethics panel would be adopted.

In the case of Alvarez, the committee initially recommended a 60-day suspension, but it was eventually downgraded to a mere censure.

Last July 9, Marcoleta revealed that P1 billion worth of funds were transferred from different banks, including those based in South Korea, to 49 offshore bank accounts allegedly linked to a Comelec official.

Marcoleta refused to divulge the identity of the Comelec official and his or her rank during the briefing, but later in the day, Garcia said it was him being referred to by the lawmaker.

According to Marcoleta, there were certain developments in the poll body’s automated election system procurement when fund transfers occurred, like a money transfer on June 22, 2023, where a deposit worth $148,000 was made by a certain Stephen Schultz/Kyong Baek from Standard Chartered Bank Jong Ro Main Branch in South Korea to Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore.

This supposedly happened alongside Comelec’s declaration that vote-counting machines used in the past election were unserviceable.

Then last August 1, Marcoleta said a volunteer in New York did bank transfers to two offshore bank accounts, which was supposedly traced to “George Erwin Mojica Garcia.”

Garcia, however, pointed out several potential holes in Marcoleta’s arguments, saying that his name was only used as a recipient of accounts that he does not own.

Aside from that, Garcia also belied Marcoleta’s claims that it was a volunteer who transferred funds to his alleged offshore bank accounts, noting that it was carried out by a public relations  firm based in the United States.