MANILA, Philippines — Calling for an “institutional purging,” the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee on Tuesday concluded its probe into irregularities in the Priority Assistance Development Fund (PDAF) system with recommendations to file criminal charges against senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada, Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr.
Also, the panel chaired by Sen. Teofisto “TG” Guingona III proposed criminal charges against six other individuals composed of businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles, former National Agribusiness Corp. (Nabcor) president Allan Javellana, former Technology Resource Center (TRC) director general Antonio Ortiz, and the senators’ PDAF “agents” Jessica Lucila “Gigi” Reyes who is the former chief of staff of Enrile, Pauline Labayen, the former apointments secretary of Estrada, and Richard Cambe, a senior staffer of Revilla.
After seven months and nine congressional hearings, the committee said there was not only “sufficient basis” to charge the three senators with plunder, bribery, and corruption, but evidence as well that legislators are the ultimate guilty parties in the “pork barrel scam” that has disgusted and gripped Filipinos since August last year.
Above and beyond even Napoles — acknowledged by the committee as “the poster child” of corruption, and the “mastermind” behind the “PDAF scam” — the report said Enrile, Estrada, and Revilla stood as proof that “the real racketeering happens within the very halls of our august institution.”
The committee gave particular credence to the testimonies of of whistleblowers and former Napoles associates Benhur Luy and Merlina Suñas in concluding that the three senators and their respective associates “did business with Napoles and received kickbacks” — with the senator’s camps receiving upwards of P326 million each.
Luy’s and Suñas’ accounting records suggested that Enrile, through Reyes and lawyer Jose Antonio Evangelista, had laundered, via bogus Napoles NGOs and for their own pocketing, “at least P363,275,000” of the senator’s PDAF.
Following the same scheme, Estrada and Labayen allegedly received kickbacks of “at least P375,750,000.”
For Revilla, whose transactions with Napoles were supposedly coursed through Cambe, the kickbacks were said to be worth “at least P326,000,000.”
The committee said Reyes, Labayen, and Cambe should be included in any cases of plunder or malversation, direct bribery, fraud against the public treasury, graft, and violation of the code of conduct and ethuical standards for public officials and employees to be brought against the senators.
Also, Nabcor’s Javellana and TRC’s Ortiz ahould be slapped with the same charges for serving as “faclitators of the PDAF scam.”
80 percent of PDAF lost to corruption
Concluding with a Latin maxim: Fiat justitia ruat caelum (Let justice be done though the heavens fall), the committee report stressed that “an institutional purging is needed once and for all.”
“Approximately 80 percent of the PDAF has been lost probably due to corruption,” the report said, apparently recalling testimonies made by Commission on Audit Chairperson Grace Pulido-Tan and Director Susan Garcia, during the first congressional hearings into the PDAF scam on August 29, 2013. “If this manner of using PDAF is descriptive of how other government funds are disbursed, then corruption is an endemic cancer insidiously spreading, and leading our government to absolute ruin.”
Filipinos at home and abroad, committee said, “are thoroughly fed up and disgusted beyond endurance over the brazen, depraved, and routinary pillaging of our national coffers.”
Recommendations
The committee can only make recommendations for actions that other judicial and executive agencies may consider or act on.
For the actual prosecution of Enrile, Estrada, Revilla, and their alleged cohorts, the committee said the task would have to be left to such agencies such as the Department of Justice, the Commission on Audit, the Office of the Ombudsman, and the Anti-Money Laundering Council.
The committee, in its report, “recognizes that the DOJ, COA, AMLC, and the Ombudsman have more evidence in their possession and, therefore, will have a better chance of probing these cases even more deeply, for purposes of prosecution. The complete list of culpable persons, and the extent of their participation, will be more properly determined by these agencies.”
Still, the committee report outlined its own “observations” on who else might be held accountable for the PDAF scam, and what other actions may be taken by government and public institutions.
It turned to the Integrated Bar of the Philippines and the Supreme Court, for example, to refer probable cause to disbar lawyers found complicit in the PDAF scam. “The most prominent among them are Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, Jessica Reyes, and Richard Cambe,” the committee report said. “There are also others who served as notaries, business advisers, and legal counsels to the accused.”
Also liable, the committee said, are officials and employees of the state-run agencies of the Nabcor, TRC the Zamboanga Rubber Estate Corporation, and the members of the agencies’ respective bids and awards committees, who, “through connivance with the legislators or through inexcusable negligence” allowed government funds to be released to Napoles network of bogus NGOs.
Restoring faith in government
The committee report said the PDAF scam has “weakened (government’s) foundations and eroded public faith in government.” It expressed hope that with its recommendations, the Blue Ribbon Committee findings may “reinforce the pillars that keep the government standing.” The report, the committee said, “seeks to restore and promote public trust in our public institutions.”
Beyond its support for the prosecution of those involved in the PDAF scam, therefore, other recommendations of the committee include a call for the Senate Committee on Ethics and Privileges to “investigate the accusations of plunder against the accused senators.”
The report also called for stricter monitoring, accreditation, and auditing of NGOs that transact with government.
Along with a raft of recommendations to reform or strengthen laws on government procurements and transactions, the Blue Ribbon Committee also stressed “the need to pass the Freedom of Information Bill” which, despite campaign promises prior to 2010 and notwithstanding assurances from Malacanang, has failed to become law under the administration of President Benigno Aquino III.
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