Wider inquiry of pork misuse up

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The country’s chief prosecutors will begin to discuss on Friday how they will undertake the Supreme Court directive last week for the executive department to undertake a wider investigation of the misuse of lawmakers’ pork barrel, Justice Secretary Leila De Lima said on Tuesday.

De Lima said the high-level meeting she called at the Department of Justice would include all her undersecretaries and assistant secretaries, Prosecutor General Claro Arellano and National Bureau of Investigation officer in charge Medardo De Lemos.

“I told them to read carefully the SC directive before the meeting and also come up with complete proposals on how to go about that another gargantuan task,” she told reporters.

She said she also intended to call on Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales to find out the “division of labor” in the task assigned to them by the high court. This was aimed at preventing work duplication or overlap, De Lima added.

Last week, the high court, in voting to declare the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) for this year as well as previous pork barrel allocations as unconstitutional, asked all prosecutorial arms of the government to conduct a wider probe of the misuse of the funds and to prosecute those involved.