3rd graft complaint filed vs Lopez

MANILA, Philippines -  A third graft complaint was filed against Environment Secretary Gina Lopez, this time for an alleged anomalous awarding of a $100-million power plant contract to a French firm.

In her complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman, Vienna Tañada claimed Lopez violated Republic Act 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act for intervening in the Department of Energy (DOE)’s awarding procedure last year for the construction of a renewable energy power plant in Zamboanga City.

Tañada said Lopez personally lobbied Mario Marasigan, head of the Renewable Energy Management Bureau, to award the contract to EcoGlobal Inc.

This was allegedly after Lopez and her five-man team were promised an all-expense paid trip to France by Jean-Philippe Henry, the firm’s chief executive officer.

Tañada, the business development officer of EcoGlobal, said Lopez even admitted in a media interview that she personally sent text messages to Marasigan in September last year to urge the latter to speed up the awarding of the renewable energy service contract to EcoGlobal.

As evidence, she cited a letter of guarantee dated Sept. 29, 2016 and submitted to the French embassy in Manila. Henry supposedly pledged in that letter to pay for Lopez and her party’s airfare, hotel accommodations, insurance coverage and travel allowances for the entire duration of their business trip.

Lopez’s team left on Oct. 2, 2016, a day before the DOE awarded the contract to EcoGlobal, Tañada said.

The $100-million contract is for the 30-megawatt solar power plant in Zamboanga City, which EcoGlobal applied for in October 2015.

Lopez, who is currently in the US on a personal trip, admitted through a text message to reporters that she communicated with Marasigan to speed up the awarding of the service contract to EcoGlobal as the company’s application was pending for more than 10 months.

She pointed out that based on the terms of the project, the contract should have been released once the company submitted all the requirements.

“EcoGlobal wanted to do solar energy in Zamboanga who has been suffering from power outages. They fulfilled all the documents... Duterte also doesn’t like slow systems...so I decided to call (Marasigan)...It would just make us look really bad if what is supposed to take 45 days takes ten months!” Lopez said.

She insisted that they went to Paris to ask for funding from the French government for the DENR’s Pasig River rehabilitation project.

“The trip was a work trip. It was not at all a perk thing. If I wasn’t certain to get help for Pasig, I would not have gone. It’s really sad how the other camp is trying to do anything, clutch at anything, to put me down. Very sad,” Lopez added.

The secretary urged her detractors to “climb a mountain and meditate.”