Bayani Fernando faces 13 graft raps over P1.6-M birthday gift

For receiving birthday cash gifts totaling P1.6 million—one of several questionable disbursements using Metro Manila Film Fest (MMFF) funds—former Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chair Bayani Fernando, now Marikina City representative, is facing graft charges.

In a news release on Tuesday, Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales said she had ordered the filing of 13 graft cases against Fernando and five other former or incumbent MMDA officials for violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.

Fernando’s corespondents were MMDA assistant general manager Edenison Fainsan and former officials Leonila Querijero, Rolando Josef, Cleofe Ablog and Robert Nacianceno who served as the agency’s general manager.

At the same time, Morales ordered the dismissal and perpetual disqualification from public office of Fainsan and Querijero after it found them guilty of grave misconduct. If already retired, they face a fine equivalent to their one-year salary.

In the charge sheet, the Ombudsman cited a special audit conducted by the Commission on Audit (COA) which found several irregularities in the disbursement of MMFF funds.

It cited several notices of disallowance issued by the COA on some disbursements made from 2003 until 2009.

These included a P1.6-million birthday cash gift for Fernando, P11.8 million in expenses for cultural projects and P10.8 million in cash incentives granted to the chair and members of the MMFF executive committee.

The COA noted irregularities such as “lack of official receipts issued by the local government units to prove receipt of funds granted for cultural projects, the absence of duly approved payrolls for the cash incentives, and issuance of the checks for cash incentives in the name of Ablog and on a pay-to-cash basis.”

Morales said the respondents’ “conspiratorial act of authorizing and approving the irregular payments and expenditures depleted the funds of the MMFF, thereby causing it undue injury.”

Fernando served as MMDA chair from June 2002 until December 2009. Before that, he was mayor of Marikina City from 1992 to 2001, after which he was succeeded by his wife Ma. Lourdes Fernando. In 2010, he ran for Vice President but lost.

FERNANDO

In August 2009, Fernando admitted at a hearing of the Senate blue ribbon committee that he received a total of P1.6 million in birthday cash gifts from the MMFF for four of the seven years he chaired the MMFF.

According to news reports, he received P500,000 each in 2003 and 2004; P100,000 in 2005 and another P500,000 in 2006.

Reached for comment, Fernando said the P1.6 million was not a birthday cash gift but the “honorarium” given to members of the MMFF executive committee since they do not receive any salary for their work.

“There’s nothing irregular [about it],” Fernando, who filed a motion for reconsideration yesterday, told the Inquirer in a phone interview. “We deserve to be given an honorarium for a job well done.”

He said that he believed the case against them would not prosper. With Jovic Yee