Another case filed vs Arroyo: Plunder

Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. AFP file photo

Former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is now facing two cases after the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) on Tuesday filed a complaint for plunder against her, her appointees to the PCSO board and two Commission on Audit officials for allegedly funneling money from the agency’s confidential fund over a three-year period.

In a 10-page complaint it filed in the Office of the Ombudsman, the PCSO also named as respondents former General Manager Rosario Uriarte; former board members Sergio Valencia, Manuel Morato, Raymundo Roquero, Jose Taruc V and Ma. Fatima Valdes; former COA Chair Reynaldo Villar and Region V head Nilda Plaras, and PCSO assistant general manager for finance Benigno Aguas.

The respondents “conspired… in withdrawing, amassing, accumulating” public funds worth P391.9 million from July 2007 to January 2010, according to the complaint.

The plunder was purportedly done “by circumventing and/or violating the subject COA circulars relative… to the liquidation of complainant PCSO’s intelligence/confidential funds,” it said.

As PCSO general manager, Uriarte wrote to then President Arroyo eight times at least twice a year requesting that she be allowed to draw from the agency’s intelligence fund in accordance with rules specified for the allocation of such, the complaint said.

In all, Uriarte drew P310 million from the intelligence fund, the document said, adding that half of the amount was taken out on Jan. 4, 2010, an election year.

Uriarte had cited the reasons by which the then president could authorize the release of intelligence funds, and these were “to monitor the PCSO’s charitable activities and projects; to buy information to determine if the funds were being used for the purposes for which [they] were intended; to fund an investigation of how medicine given to beneficiaries marked ‘Botika ng Masa’ had ended up in commercial markets, and to counter various scams victimizing lotto bettors and winners.”

President Aquino on Tuesday confirmed the two cases filed by the government against Arroyo.

The first case was the electoral sabotage complaint filed by the Commission on Elections against Arroyo, former Maguidanao Governor Andal Ampatuan Sr. and former Comelec provincial supervisor Lintang Bedol alleging cheating in the 2007 elections.

Mr. Aquino made the confirmation in the course of answering a question on what his administration’s policies would be next year now that the government had filed a case against Arroyo. With a report from Gil Cabacungan