CDO mayor Moreno indicted for graft over tax deficiency deal

Cagayan de Oro City mayor Oscar Moreno is set to face graft charges for the anomalous settlement deal with Ajinomoto Philippines Corporation in connection with the company’s P2.9 million tax liabilities.

In a statement on Wednesday, Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales said she found probable cause to file charges for violation of Sections 3(e) and 3(g) of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act against Moreno and Public Services Officer II Glenn Bañez.

The two were indicted for unlawfully entering into an agreement with Ajinomoto Philippines to settle the company’s tax liabilities that amounted to P2.9 million.

In 2013, Bañez issued a Notice of Assessment to Ajinomoto covering its 2006 to 2012 tax deficiency of P2.9 million.

In 2014, the city entered into a settle agreement and accepted the offer of P300,000 as full settlement for Ajinomoto’s local business tax deficiency.

The agreement was signed in exchange of Ajinomoto’s withdrawal of the civil case it filed before the Regional Trial Court of Misamis Oriental, the Ombudsman said.

Bañez told the Ombudsman the agreement was entered into since “there was no guarantee that it will win the case in the RTC and that the case might drag all the way to the Supreme Court.”

But Ombudsman Morales said “Moreno and Bañez gave Ajinomoto unwarranted benefit, advantage or preference when they entered into the Agreement with the latter without the required authorization from the City Council.”

Their graft indictment is subject to a motion for reconsideration.

The two are accused of violating Section 3(e) of the anti-graft law, which prohibits public officials from causing any undue injury to any party, including the Government, or giving any private party any unwarranted benefits, advantage or preference in the discharge of his official administrative or judicial functions through manifest partiality, evident bad faith or gross inexcusable negligence; as well as Section 3(g), which punishes the act of a public officer entering, on behalf of the government, into any contract or transaction manifestly or grossly disadvantageous to the same. CDG

READ: Reelected CDO mayor Moreno ordered suspended amid graft rap