DAR officials ‘are the ones involved, they’re the ones investigating’

Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes: ‘In no position to investigate’. Photo from www.dar.gov.ph/

MANILA, Philippines—“They are the ones involved, and now they are the ones investigating… They should resign.”

That’s the demand of Antonia Pascual, the national president of the Department of Agrarian Reform Employees Association (Darea).

The employees’ union wants Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes and other top officials to resign in the wake of reports of the agency’s release of pork barrel funds to questionable nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in 2010 and 2011.

Pascual said De los Reyes and his undersecretaries were in no position to investigate the releases of funds to the NGOs, many of which had links to detained businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.

“We thought all the while that Team De los Reyes was clean… but now we’re seeing exposés involving millions of pesos worth of transactions,” she said in an interview.

The Inquirer reported earlier that P230 million from the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) went to 16 dubious NGOs in 2011 through agreements to distribute agricultural livelihood packages forged between local government units (LGUs) and Agrarian Reform Undersecretaries Narciso Nieto, Jerry Pacturan and Perry Felix Villanueva.

The fund releases by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) included funding initiatives made by Senators Gregorio Honasan II (P100 million) and Jinggoy Estrada (P50 million), which were approved by Senate President Franklin Drilon, who was then chair of the Senate finance committee.

De los Reyes said the fund releases were under investigation by Undersecretary Anthony Parungao. The DAR also said it was already preparing charges against the dubious NGOs after it was found that no projects were implemented at all.

Nieto, who resigned in October last year, signed some of the agreements on behalf of De los Reyes while other contracts were signed by Pacturan, according to the earlier Inquirer report.

Both Pacturan and Villanueva, who handled the agency’s bidding and awards committee and finance division, oversaw the release of the checks to the NGOs.

Gloria Almazan, Darea secretary, said De los Reyes and his undersecretaries should inhibit themselves from the investigation, and should resign from their posts due to suspicions raised by the DAR’s involvement in the controversy.

Pascual said that at the very least, De los Reyes should have suspended Undersecretaries Villanueva and Pacturan while the probe was ongoing.

In an earlier statement, Parungao said the funds allocated to the NGOs were “merely endorsed to DAR” by legislators.

He stressed that the reforms that they were starting to put in place early on precisely stipulated that all funds released to entities were subject to bidding, and gave the assurance that, save those under investigation now, no other fund disbursements were made without having undergone due process.