Napoles got mayor’s letters to Agri chief

Be careful what you sign, especially letters asking for P5 million.

Between Nov. 7, 2006, and Feb. 5, 2007—shortly after Arthur C. Yap took over as secretary of agriculture—44 mayors signed letters addressed to him requesting funds for their agricultural enhancement programs. Yap is currently the representative of Bohol’s third district.

Mayors write department secretaries all the time requesting for this and that. But something went amiss with the 44 letters addressed to Yap. They took a detour to the office of Janet Lim-Napoles at Discovery Suites instead of being mailed, e-mailed or hand-delivered to Yap’s office at the Department of Agriculture.

Why did Napoles, who is embroiled in a P10-billion pork barrel scam and its extension involving fertilizer funds, want those letters, each of which asked for P5 million, or a total of P220 million? What did her office do with those letters?

The Inquirer contacted the Napoles camp but it could not be reached by press time.

Yap said approval of local-government requests was not up to him. Requests were referred to regional field units for evaluation, he said. For fertilizer funding requests bigger than P5 million, he said, the final approving authority was the Oversight Committee on Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization.

Since the letter that mayors were asked to reproduce and sign asked for exactly P5 million and not a centavo more, the mayors’ requests did not have to be forwarded to the oversight committee.

In a phone interview with the Inquirer, Yap said it was but “natural” for him to receive letters from municipal mayors and barangay (village) captains requesting for funds. Considering there are 1,491 municipal mayors and 143 city mayors in the country, 44 letters hardly made a pile on his desk, or a dent on his mailbox.

No DBM records

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) could not confirm whether the alleged P5 million requested by each of the 44 mayors from the agriculture department, particularly out of the Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (Acef), were indeed disbursed to the mayors.

The media relations department of the DBM explained that it does not keep records of actual expenditures of government agencies.

The DBM said that what it does have are records of its budget allocations and releases to government agencies. But where the funds released to the government agencies actually went is not part of its records.

According to a report published last year by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the DBM released P1.4 billion to the agriculture department in 2007 to fund the Acef. Moreover, according to PIDS, the entire amount was used by the department.

PIDS said that based on data it gathered, the agriculture department did not receive any funds from the DBM for the Acef in 2006.

From 2000 to 2009, the PIDS report showed the budget department released a total of P7.75 billion to the agriculture department as funding for the Acef. Of the total amount, P7.58 billion, or nearly 98 percent, was used by the agriculture department.

Unused government funds go back to the national treasury.

Fashion designer’s role

The mayors were asked to write their letters by fashion designer Eddie Baddeo, whose loyal clients include politicians and their families. And they handed the letters back to Baddeo once they were done.

Within three days of the signing of each letter, Baddeo would have it delivered to the office of Napoles’ JLN Corp. at Discovery Suites. All the letters were date-stamped and received by either Neil slash JLN (Neil Tan, now deceased) or Baby Sula, aka Marina C. Sula, president of Masaganang Ani para sa Magsasaka Foundation, one of the alleged dummy foundations under JLN Corp. The JLN seal was affixed to some of the letters.

In an affidavit submitted to the National Bureau of Investigation, Baddeo said Napoles, who had been his client since 1999, offered him P275,000 for each letter that the designer would have signed by an incumbent mayor. Baddeo said that when he read the draft letter, he thought its content would be beneficial to the farmer constituents of the mayors whom he knew.

In an interview with the Inquirer, Baddeo admitted he needed money at that time. Business was slow and the principal for a property he had mortgaged was due. In fact, he said, he redeemed his property as soon as Napoles gave him a “cash advance” of P1 million.

In his affidavit, Baddeo said he was introduced to Napoles by a client. He had designed and created the gowns for Napoles and her children for various occasions, including the debut of Napoles’ older daughter, Christine.

In the interview, Baddeo said he dressed the entire entourage for the Napoleses’ 25th wedding anniversary, which was held at a seaside hotel resort in Cebu with a Mass officiated by 25 priests in silver soutanes.

He would often do the fittings and finishings to the gowns at Napoles’ Discovery Suites office, where he met whistle-blower Benhur Luy and the late Tan.

No resistance

The designer encountered no resistance from the mayors, who were either his clients or friends of his clients. All were more than willing to sign.

The difficulty for him was in making the trips out of town. The nearest towns were in Bulacan and the farthest ones in Luzon were in Cagayan, Isabela and Kalinga in the north and Catanduanes in the south.  Baddeo was also able to solicit letters from the mayors of Oton in Iloilo, Gamay in Northern Samar and Mati in Davao Oriental.

The affidavit said that, according to Napoles, all Baddeo had to do was to present the form letter to his contact mayors and get them to sign.

“But she cautioned me never to mention her name to the mayors,” Baddeo told the Inquirer.

Acef targeted

Almost all of the letters were copied on official municipal stationery from the draft given by Baddeo—word for word, grammatical errors and all.  They solicited “farm implements, tools and/or inputs” in the amount of P5 million for distribution “to the most deserving farmers” in the municipality. The funds were being requested for the “Agricultural Enhancement Program,” in an obvious attempt to access the Acef.

Others asked outright for P5 million, adding that the money would be used to “procure various farm implements.”

Another version of the letter talked about “the economic crisis” that “has tremendously affected the cost of living of our residents especially those in the countryside who solely depend their livelihood from farming.”

A few mayors chose to rewrite, adding a paragraph here and there.

Romeo A. Gontang, who was reelected mayor of Gainza, Camarines Sur, in 2007, asked for P5 million for “humanitarian considerations.”  The agri-inputs would be used to ensure a good harvest, he said, so his constituents could “rebuild their homes and rehabilitate their lives even if only to eat three square meals a day for the poorest of the poor.”

Nelson C. David, mayor of Limay town, Bataan province, took the trouble of listing the farm equipment and inputs his municipality needed for lowland and upland farming, from irrigation pipes to thresher to hybrid palay seeds.

Among the earliest petitioners was Carmelo Lazatin, then mayor of Angeles City, who wrote a more eloquent letter.

In his city, he said, “the agricultural industry has been constantly prioritized although the area has been considered highly urbanized.” But they were hindered from fully implementing their farm programs due to the “increasing price of commodities including fertilizers, sprayers, seedling, tools, among others,” and their lack of resources.

Fernando O. Cumigad of Gamu town, Isabela province, wrote that his town is one of the largest palay and corn producers in the region. “Unfortunately, it had not been our people’s luck to be well funded,” the mayor said, hence the request for P5 million.

Efren E. Pascual, mayor of Orani town, Bataan province, said the funds would be used to repair “one of the vital farm-to-market roads that [we] have been using for the transfer of farm and other agricultural products to the market.”

Vicente G. Pagurayan, mayor of Sto Niño, Cagayan province, said, “We are known for our perseverance and hard work” and the money “would help us get back on track with our farm production.”

Manuel Lee Oliver Jr., mayor of Pasacao town, Camarines Sur province, where fishing and farming are the main sources of livelihood, even enclosed typhoon destruction summary reports.

Cautioned

Baddeo told the Inquirer that he could have asked more mayors for letters, but when one of the mayors cautioned him that he might be used in a scam and another said he had signed a similar letter before and received nothing, the designer stopped soliciting letters.

He said a former actor was also soliciting letters from mayors, but the man was not willing to talk about his involvement.

In his affidavit, Baddeo said that after delivering the letters to the JLN office, he had no more personal knowledge about what became of the mayors’ requests.

Of the 44 mayors who wrote Yap in 2006, only 14 were reelected in 2007 and could have followed up on their requests with the agriculture department. The rest were replaced and could very well have forgotten about their signatures that were each worth P5 million.—With reports by Gil Cabacungan and Michelle Remo

 First posted 12:07 am | Sunday, August 4th, 2013