Comelec chair bares more fraud claims

Commission on Election Chairman George Garcia. INQUIRER PHOTO / NINO JESUS ORBETA

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will expand its probe of election irregularities to include allegations of rigged bidding, price jacking and tax fraud that the US Department of Justice unearthed in connection with the bribery and money laundering charges against ex-Chair Andres Bautista and officials of the poll body’s former automation service provider, Smartmatic.

Speaking at a media forum in Manila on Wednesday, Comelec Chair George Erwin Garcia said the 11-member body that he created last year to investigate the 2016 automation service procurement would include the indictment findings in its investigation, which is expected to wrap up next week.

On the accusation of rigged bidding mentioned in the indictment, Garcia said he hoped the body would uncover all possible participants.

“We want to know how it was done. It can’t be that it was only Chairman (Bautista) who did the rigging on his own—it takes several persons to tango,” the chair said.

READ: Comelec begins probe on ex-chief Bautista

He said he also hoped the evidence mentioned in the indictment will shed light on the value-added taxes (VAT) imposed on one of the contracts that Smartmatic won for the lease of vote counting machines (VCMs), with an option to buy.

For the 2016 polls, Smartmatic won three contracts from Comelec worth a total of P8.5 billion, two for the lease of more than 90,000 VCMs, with an option to buy, and a third for the transmission of election results.

The indictment specifically mentioned the payment of around P195 million that Bautista approved in August 2016 relating to the release of VAT withheld from an installment paid by Comelec for one of the VCM contracts.

Garcia said a total of P700 million in VAT was “paid” by Comelec in favor of Smartmatic, but he added the Bureau of Internal Revenue had earlier certified the poll body is VAT exempt.

He said if Comelec ever includes VAT—7 percent in the case of Smartmatic—in its contract, the amount should have been retained by Comelec before paying the contract fees, and the VAT will either become part of the poll body’s savings or reverted to the national treasury.

Garcia said at that time, Comelec’s law department opposed the release of VAT payments to Smartmatic but it was “reversed.” He said he did not know if the other commissioners at that time knew about the law department’s opposition.

Bautista’s successor, the late Sixto Brillantes Jr., also questioned the release of the VAT payment, Garcia added.