Militant group files plunder case against Aquino

By: Bong Lozada - 11 years ago

The Malampaya gas platform located 80 kilometers northwest of the coast of Palawan. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—A militant peasant group has filed a plunder case against President Benigno Aquino III and 12 others at the Office of the Ombudsman on the alleged pillage of P125 million from the Malampaya Gas Funds purportedly benefiting dummy non-government organizations linked to the Department of Agrarian Reform.

Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas filed the case Tuesday morning against Aquino together with Department of Budget and Management Secretary Florencio Abad, DAR Secretary Virgilio Delos Reyes and “pork-barrel queen” Janet-Lim Napoles.

Whistle-blower Benhur Luy and eight others connected to the Napoles scam were also charged with the felony.

KMP chairperson Rafael Mariano said that the complaint would show that the DAR is a pipeline that corrupt public officials use to steal from the national funds.

“This plunder complaint will show that under the Aquino regime, the DAR is not only a conduit of big landlords, like the Cojuangcos, in strengthening their control over vast haciendas but a conduit in plundering the nation’s coffers.”

In a 16-page, 70-evidence complaint the KMP accused Aquino of using the Malampaya Funds for projects that violate a law that a former president has passed.

KMP said that Aquino violated Presidential Decree 910, a law that the late president Ferdinand Marcos passed that would make all energy-related funds to be used solely for power and energy.

“The President and the respondent public officials of the DBM should know and should have known that the Malampaya Funds were earmarked for energy development or energy-related projects,” KMP said in the complaint.

According to the group, bogus NGOs that received the P125-million fund from Malampaya were under the watch of Luy and John Raymond De Asis, the alleged driver-bodyguard of Napoles.

“The projects that the DAR entered with the NGOs… are not in any way related to energy-development,” the group said in their complaint.

“Worst, those projects were never implemented. Not a single centavo was spent for the said projects and not a single farmer received any benefit.”

Abad, together with his Undersecretary Mario Relampagos, were also charged as “principals by indispensable cooperation” since the two approved the release of funds to the DAR which would be used for projects unrelated to energy-development.

The KMP added that the proponents on the complaint used the predicament of farmers as “justification for the release of public funds they have squandered.”