Office of the Ombudsman PHOTO FROM https://www.ombudsman.gov.ph/
In a signal counterpoint to the P10-billion pork barrel scam case slowly making its way through the justice department, the Senate and the Office of the Ombudsman, the Sandiganbayan antigraft court on Friday convicted two former regional officials of the Department of the Interior and Local Government for the corruption-tainted use of congressional pork barrel funds in the Caraga Region 16 years ago.
DILG Regional Directors Carlos Derecho and Quirino Libunao were found guilty of violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act for overpricing, falsifying supporting documents, and ghost deliveries in the implementation of a medical project during the Ramos administration, according to a report on the case by the Office of the Ombudsman.
PDAF’s precursor
The project was bankrolled by P13.832 million from the Countrywide Development Fund (to be later called the Priority Development Assistance Fund), or the pork barrel allotments, of then Surigao del Norte Rep. Constantino Navarro Jr. from 1997 to 1998.
Derecho and Libunao were charged with seven and two counts, respectively, of violations of the antigraft law, each count with a minimum imprisonment of six years and one month up to a maximum of 10 years, with perpetual disqualification from public office.
The Sandiganbayan ruled that Derecho and Libunao acted in bad faith “as evident in their signatures in the documents consisting of disbursement vouchers, invoices, purchase orders and checks.”
Unfit for trial
Navarro, who was congressman of Surigao del Norte’s first district from 1995 to 1998, “has yet to be arraigned pending evaluation of his mental condition,” the Ombudsman said.
In 2008, Navarro’s physician, Dr. Amadeo A. Alinea Jr., testified that Navarro was “mentally incapacitated to understand the nature of his illness and the outcome of his behaviors as well as decisions due to a major episode and dementia due to renal failure and diabetes mellitus type II.”
The Ombudsman filed graft charges against Derecho and Libunao based on a special audit conducted by the Commission on Audit (COA) on Navarro’s pork barrel spending which was channeled through the DILG as the implementing agency.
The antigraft court found that Navarro’s pork barrel was used, on separate occasions, to purchase assorted medicines, “shabu” testing kits, plows, notebooks, ballpens and blackboard erasers without public bidding.
The court found that the suppliers were pre-selected by Navarro after the Office of the Special Prosecutor presented evidence that direct contracting was unjustified in view of the availability of substitutes in the market.
Pre-selected suppliers
In its ruling, the Sandiganbayan concluded that the rigged bidding benefited the suppliers—Revelstone Sales International, E.G. Trading, San Marino Laboratories Corp. and Mr.Bethel Pharmaceutical.
“(The suppliers) were pre-chosen to supply, for no good reasons at all that cut them above the rest from the pools of suppliers available in the market who could have supplied similar products had there been a public bidding,” according to the decision penned by Justice Efren de la Cruz.
However, the Sandiganbayan acquitted the private suppliers Iluminada Tuble, Gerardo Rosario, Edwin Dizon and Marlene Corpus because the state prosecutor failed to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
Tuble was, however, ordered to pay P1.071 million to the DILG Caraga representing the price difference per box of medicines sold to the local government.
One of the defendants died seven years ago, while another accused, Mario Tokong, remained at large.
RELATED STORIES
Businessmen see ‘a lot’ of corruption in gov’t
Now is the time to expose the corrupt