Former PCSO officials charged with graft

The new management of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office has filed graft charges against former PCSO officials who approved a 50-year contract worth P42 billion with an Australian company for the supply of thermal paper used for lotto tickets.

Charged on Friday before the Office of the Ombudsman were former PCSO General Manager and Vice Chair Rosario Uriarte and former Directors Jose Taruc, Raymundo Roquero, Ma. Fatima Valdes and Manuel Morato.

The five were members of the old PCSO board who signed Resolution No. 2171 which approved the contractual joint venture agreement (CJVA) between the PCSO and the Australia-based TMA Group of Companies.

Lawyer Aleta Tolentino, an incumbent PCSO director, noted that only Sergio Valencia, the PCSO chair at the time, did not sign the resolution.

“That’s why he was not included in the complaint,” she said. “When the board of directors of the PCSO’s previous administration submitted the deal for approval in 2009, he (Valencia) had questioned it. He really didn’t want it.”

Also named respondents were TMA Group officials and local representatives, including Anthony Karam, lawyer Ofelia Cajigal and Christine Fong, Tolentino said.

The complaint was signed by PCSO General Manager Jose Ferdinand Rojas II.

Apart from the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (Republic Act No. 3019), the respondents were also charged with violation of the Government Procurement Reform Act (RA 9184) and the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees.

In a resolution approved on April 15, the current PCSO board of directors declared the joint venture agreement between the agency and TMA Group of Companies null and void “for patent violation of applicable laws, rules and regulations.”

“It was simply a supply contract in the guise of a joint venture agreement,” Tolentino said.

Under the contract, the Australian firm was to invest P4.4 billion in the project, while the value of the paper contract which the PCSO would pay over 50 years would be P42 billion, said Tolentino.

“The mere fact that you are tying down the PCSO for 50 years for the supply of papers exclusively from this particular group is indeed questionable,” she had said in a previous interview.