‘Beneficiary’ says he learned from fertilizer scam

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet—A Benguet town official who denied benefiting from P900 million of the Malampaya Fund in 2009 said he and other officials avoided that trap by heeding the lessons from the 2004 fertilizer fund scam.

Kibungan Mayor Benito Siadto said many Cordillera communities had sought aid from Malacañang or Congress to build farm-to-market roads instead of farm supplies after studying how detained Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-joc” Bolante allegedly distributed P728 million worth of fertilizers to generate votes for former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her allies.

The so-called scam was first raised in 2004 by Sen. Panfilo Lacson but it became a full blown scandal in 2006, prompting Bolante to fly to the United States. He was repatriated in 2008 and was subsequently charged with malversation along with other Department of Agriculture officials.

“We learned from the Joc-joc Bolante [incident] that soft projects are usually [vulnerable to] scams, so our project requests since then have been [for the construction of] farm-to-market roads and other hard projects,” Siadto said.

Hard projects are infrastructure projects financed by the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), or the pork barrel.

Siadto was listed among mayors whose towns were supposed beneficiaries of farming kits that would have been coursed through the Department of Agrarian Reform using the Malampaya Fund.

The project involved agrarian reform communities ravaged by Typhoon “Pepeng” in 2009 but the money was allegedly siphoned instead by fake nongovernment organizations (NGOs) linked to detained businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.

Siadto said authorities had yet to invite him to an investigation regarding the Malampaya Fund. He said he learned that Kibungan was a supposed beneficiary from a list posted in August by the Inquirer.

Because of the publicity surrounding the fertilizer fund scam, Siadto said many Benguet mayors became wary about projects that involved farm inputs, like fertilizers, farm tools or medical kits.

He said these projects could be manipulated to generate kickbacks. “Besides, what we really need in Kibungan are farm-to-market roads,” he said, adding that many farmers there already have the tools and could source out their own farm inputs.

He said the recent scandals have enraged upland communities because it made the process of securing support from Congress more difficult.

“Every time we request for funds from congressmen and senators, they tell us that there are no available funds, even after we put up with the stringent requirements. And yet, Napoles was able to get P10 billion easily,” he said.

Kibungan was also listed among towns identified as pork barrel beneficiaries, by Napoles’ NGOs, based on a special audit report covering 2007 until 2009 by the Commission on Audit (COA).

Siadto said the COA wrote him in 2009, asking if Kibungan received farm materials worth P10 million that was financed by the PDAF of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile. He informed the COA that the town had not received any allocations.

The mayor said he received a subpoena from the National Bureau of Investigation in September, inviting him to shed light on the town’s part in the scandal.

The COA report said Kibungan’s P10-million allocation was facilitated by the National Agribusiness Corp., which transacted through an alleged Napoles NGO, the Masaganang Ani Para sa Magsasaka Foundation Inc. (Mamfi).

They were supposed to supply 100 Kibungan farmers with wheelbarrows and knapsack sprayers but the town had not received any of these items, Siadto said.

He said he had informed the Office of the Ombudsman that documents indicating that he received these supplies were fake. One such document is a delivery receipt for the supposed farm tools that were received by one Solas Lagua.

Siadto said only seven of the 100 supposed beneficiaries listed by Mamfi were Kibungan residents.

“The supposed list of beneficiaries looked like they used common Kibungan surnames and attached the first name that came to mind, and only seven matched real residents,” he said.