BAGUIO CITY—Beneficiaries with no clear identities. A nongovernment organization (NGO) that held office in a shanty. A meeting held in a garage.
Despite these findings by the Commission on Audit (COA), former Benguet Rep. Samuel Dangwa continued to insist that main pork barrel scam witness Benhur Luy was lying when he said at a Senate hearing that Dangwa was among several lawmakers who funneled funds to bogus NGOs formed by alleged pork queen Janet Lim-Napoles.
“Benhur is a liar as far as I’m concerned,” Dangwa said in a text message shortly after Luy, in the televised Senate hearing, read a list of legislators, which included Dangwa and his children, who received kickbacks from anomalous pork projects.
Luy said Dangwa took as much as 80 percent in cut from Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) allocations that were facilitated by Napoles NGOs.
A special audit report of the COA, detailing how pork was spent from 2007 to 2009, said Dangwa funneled his pork for two projects to the NGO Social Development Program for Farmers Foundation Inc. (SDPFFI), of which Luy was president.
Dangwa said he stood by a statement he issued in September that he was erroneously implicated in the pork scam.
In September, the Department of Justice filed in the Office of the Ombudsman malversation, graft and direct bribery complaints against Dangwa and other lawmakers.
The complaint against Dangwa involved the misuse of P26.77 million of his P54-million pork, or PDAF, from 2007 to 2009.
The COA report said Dangwa’s total pork releases from 2007 to 2009 amounted to P166.75 million, of which P119.75 million was spent on various infrastructure projects while P47 million went to “soft projects.”
The report said some of Dangwa’s pork projects were facilitated by government-owned and -controlled corporations that dealt with bogus NGOs, like SDPFFI, identified with Napoles.
The report showed that P8.73 million of Dangwa’s pork went to SDPFFI out of the P9.7-million total allocation facilitated by the government’s National Livelihood Development Corp. (NLDC).
It said P19.52 million of Dangwa’s pork was channeled to the Technology Resource Center (TRC) that allocated P10.2 million to projects administered by Countrywide Agricultural and Rural Economic Development Foundation (CARED).
The COA audit team reported that the office of CARED was a shanty occupied by the mother of one of the incorporators.
A total of P7.2 million went to projects of People’s Development Program for Farmers Foundation, P1.8 million to projects of Masaganang mga Bukirin Foundation Inc., and P970,000 to projects of Ito na Movement Foundation.
The report showed that P15.52 million was coursed through the National Agribusiness Corp. (Nabcor), which went to projects of SDPFFI.
According to the COA, some of these allocations involved unliquidated cash advances.
The NLDC, Nabcor and TRC are among the government firms that will be abolished by the end of the year due to their involvement in the pork barrel scam. Also up for termination are the government’s ZNAC Rubber Estate Corp. and the Philippine Forest Corp.
When a government audit team tried to validate the SDPFFI projects, the report said, its members were entertained in a garage owned by another individual.
The P8.73-million NLDC project, which Dangwa financed, was meant for training and the procurement of livelihood kits.
The COA report said one of the pork allocations under Dangwa’s account was for agricultural production kits for farmer-beneficiaries in the Benguet towns of Itogon, Kibungan, La Trinidad, Mankayan, Sablan, Tublay, Atok, Bakun and Bokod.
But of the 283 selected beneficiaries, only 180 were on the list of registered voters in the towns. The identities of the rest were not established. With a report from Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon