Ombudsman probing reports man it sued is dead

MANILA, Philippines—The Office of the Ombudsman has started verifying reports that one of the officials ordered charged in connection with the P728-million fertilizer fund scam has passed on.

Deputy Special Prosecutor Jesus Micael said the Office of the Ombudsman was checking with the National Statistics Office (NSO) whether reports that Gumersindo Lasam had already died was true.

Micael need not go to the NSO to verify the death of Lasam, a former director of the Department of Agriculture’s Cagayan Valley office.

Inquirer report

The Philippine Daily Inquirer, citing a police official, reported on April 14, 2009, that Lasam was shot dead by still unidentified men in Cagayan province early on that day.

Lasam was riding his pickup truck on his way to his farm when he was waylaid by two gunmen at around 7:15 a.m. along the NIA Bridge in Barangay Basi West in Solana town, said Chief Supt. Roberto Damian, Cagayan Valley police regional director.

The suspects immediately fled on a motorcycle after shooting Lasam.

If the reports were correct, the Office of the Ombudsman would no longer file the information, or charge sheet, against him, Micael said.

Assistant Ombudsman Jose de Jesus said there was no oversight or error in Lasam’s inclusion in the order to file the charges, since he was named in the complaint.

De Jesus said that since the panel that conducted the preliminary investigation did not receive any official death certificate from Lasam’s family or lawyers, he was considered a living respondent.

“Otherwise, it will be easy for others to fake their deaths to avoid being charged with criminal violations,” he added.

Defense crumbling

In the House of Representatives, Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Neri Javier Colmenares said Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez’s defense in her impeachment trial in the Senate was “crumbling” because she included even a dead man in the plunder charges she filed against supposed perpetrators of the fertilizer fund scam.

The fertilizer fund scam is considered the first and strongest among the six articles of impeachment filed by the 11-man panel of prosecutors from the House in the Senate, which will convene as an impeachment court on May 9 to try the impeachment case.

The Ombudsman recently filed plunder charges against former Agriculture Secretary Luis “Cito” Lorenzo, former Undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-joc” Bolante and several others after almost seven years since the scandal first broke out and was investigated by the Senate.

Colmenares said one of those included in the charge sheet was Lasam who was killed in an ambush in 2009.

“If it is indeed true that DA Cagayan Valley Regional Executive Director Gumersindo Lasam was already dead after he was ambushed in April 2009 then it only goes to show that the filing was rushed for show,” Colmenares said.