Double whammy for Tesda director

When it rains, it pours for Joel Villanueva.

By a strange coincidence, the Office of the Ombudsman on Friday green-lighted the conduct of a preliminary investigation against the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) director general in connection with the alleged misuse of P10 million of his pork barrel allocations when he was still a party-list congressman in 2008.

The antigraft agency chose to announce this decision immediately after Villanueva and eight other former and incumbent lawmakers were charged by the National Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice in the third set of cases involving the alleged diversion of P10 billion in congressional pork barrel funds to bogus foundations and projects of the alleged scam mastermind, Janet Lim-Napoles.

The first case for preliminary investigation against Villanueva involves a group that is not part of Napoles’ network of fake nongovernment organizations.

In a statement, the Ombudsman said it was upholding the recommendation of its field investigation office to start the preliminary investigation and administrative adjudication proceedings against Villanueva, when he was a Cibac party-list representative. Cibac, or Citizens’ Battle Against Corruption, is a multisectoral organization whose advocacy is to fight corruption in the bureaucracy.

Aside from Villanueva, also facing preliminary investigation are former Agriculture Secretary and now Bohol Rep. Arthur Yap and nine officials of the National Agribusiness Corp. (Nabcor) and Aaron Foundation Philippines Inc. (AFPI).

They were charged with malversation, falsification of public documents and violation of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (Republic Act No. 3019).

Administrative complaints for grave misconduct and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service were also brought against them.

According to the Ombudsman, the case against Villanueva et al. stemmed from the alleged irregularities in the use of his pork barrel, officially known as the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), amounting to P10 million, which he allocated for the purchase and distribution of vegetable seedlings to six villages in Compostela Valley.

The project, which also involved the purchase of liquid fertilizers and a postharvest facility, was implemented in June 2008 through the AFPI with Nabcor as the implementing agency upon Villanueva’s recommendation to the Department of Budget and Management, the Ombudsman said.

But it was discovered that Nabcor was not authorized to implement PDAF-funded projects and that the AFPI had “no capacity to implement the project” since it only declared a capital stock contribution of only P68,000.

The Ombudsman said the agreement between Nabcor and AFPI “did not include technical information,” including the project name, identified beneficiaries, benefits, site location and even dates for project monitoring.

It said village officials in Compostela Valley also “attested that no agriculture-based livelihood project was implemented and neither was there any distribution of seedlings, liquid fertilizers or threshers.”

“Based on the audit report of the Commission on Audit, the supplier of the farm inputs and farm implement is not a licensed fertilizer distributor and has no existing business name registration,” it said.

“Neither could investigators locate the supplier in its given address in Malabon City. On-site field validation also discovered that not a single individual on the list of beneficiaries was identified as a bonafide resident of the province,” it said.