Palace keeping hands off ‘pork’ scandal

MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang insisted yesterday it is keeping its hands off the pork barrel scam issue, saying it’s the task of the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the matter and find out who should be held accountable.

“What we have always maintained is that where the evidence leads, the DOJ will investigate. So we will leave it with the DOJ to assess and evaluate those cases,” presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said yesterday.  

He said the government’s hands-off policy on the issue “should douse any suspicion or fear that this government is set to protect its allies,” including Joel Villanueva of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority. “Secretary Villanueva has submitted his signatures to the Questioned Documents section of the NBI. He is willing to be investigated, and we certainly welcome the statement of Secretary Villanueva,” Lacierda said in his regular press briefing.

“These are events that happened prior to the administration, and so we certainly still maintain the belief that where the evidence leads us, then let’s go there. But in the case of Joel Villanueva, he has already stated as much that he is willing to be investigated,” he pointed out. 

“The President maintains the same principle that where the evidence leads, the DOJ will prosecute, they will investigate,” the spokesman stressed.

“I think that’s a situation regardless of whether you are close or not.” Villanueva – a former party-list congressman representing Citizens Battle Against Corruption – is a close friend and political ally of the Chief Executive. 

After serving for three terms as congressman or nine years until 2010, Villanueva was appointed by Aquino to head TESDA.

Villanueva said he couldn’t say what made Technological Resource Center (TRC) director-on-leave Dennis Cunanan link him to allegations of misuse of lawmakers’ pork barrel, officially called Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).    “Cunanan became TRC chief when I was no longer a congressman,” Villanueva argued.

“Is there a hatchet job against me? I hope I will not be made a sacrificial lamb here, only because I’m an ally of the President,” he said.

“I’m very confident in this case because I know that I have no ghost project. I don’t even know Janet Lim-Napoles, or Benhur Luy or Cunanan. I never met or talked to this guy,” Villanueva said.

Luy is the main whistle-blower in the PDAF scam allegedly masterminded by Napoles.

He said “it’s the height of stupidity or insanity” for him to have participated in any crime during the time of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as “they (Arroyo and her officials) were all eyes and all ears on us.”

He said his project had been liquidated by the Commission on Audit and the TRC, and cleared in the COA special audit report that had been used as basis for the filing of graft and plunder charges before the Office of the Ombudsman against dozens of officials, including three senators. “I wrote the DOJ and NBI in September 2013 that I was willing to be subjected to any investigation. And I cooperated,” Villanueva said.

“My only request is that if they really have evidence, then go ahead, I’d be happy. But if not, then they should clear my name. I don’t think this is fair. Will this drag on forever? It’s almost a year now, but they have not seen anything,” he complained. 

Probe expanded

At the DOJ, Secretary Leila de Lima said government prosecutors have started looking into the possible involvement of more lawmakers in the pork barrel scam.

De Lima said fact-finding teams from the NBI, Office of the Ombudsman and Inter-Agency Anti-Graft Coordinating Council (IAAGCC) are investigating more senators and congressmen who had channeled pork barrel funds to questionable projects implemented by the TRC and the National Agribusiness Corp. (Nabcor).

The names of  the lawmakers were provided by Cunanan and former Nabcor officials Rhodora Mendoza and Vic Cacal.

“We will check first if these transactions with Nabcor and TRC are also with the NGOs of Napoles. That’s what the NBI is doing now in preparing for the third batch of PDAF cases,” she told reporters.

De Lima explained that those transactions related to Napoles’ bogus NGOs would be forwarded to the ombudsman, which is now conducting preliminary investigation into earlier plunder charges filed by the NBI.

For non-Napoles transactions, she said they would be referred to the IAAGCC, which is tasked to pursue PDAF cases outside the 2007 to 2009 period covered by the NBI probe.

“There is ongoing fact-finding because as you can recall, the COA report talks about over 180 lawmakers – senators and congressmen. Only few have been charged so far so IAAGCC is looking at others,” she said.

The DOJ and the NBI are member-agencies of the council, which is headed by the Ombudsman.

De Lima confirmed IAAGCC’s probe after Mendoza and Cacal submitted to the Ombudsman a list of 83 lawmakers who had coursed a total of P1.7 billion of their PDAF allocations during a three-year period through Nabcor, with orders to funnel the funds to questionable NGOs.  

Regulating NGOs

Two Mindanao lawmakers, meanwhile, are seeking the regulation of non-government organizations (NGOs) in the wake of the involvement of many of them in the irregular use of PDAF.

In House Bill 3938, Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez and his brother Maximo, who represents party-list Abante Mindanao, proposed the creation of a regulatory body called National Commission on Nongovernmental Organizations (NCNO).

“We don’t want NGOs, as what appears to be happening now, to be convenient conduits for corruption and plunder of the people’s money,” the bill’s authors said.

They said aside from weeding out bogus NGOs, the regulation of these groups “will also give recognition to the role and contributions of the NGO sector as a partner in Philippine development and encourage a more effective private participation in the nation’s governance processes.”

They noted the alleged involvement of many of these groups in irregularities in the use of PDAF of senators and congressmen, and the complaint of legitimate organizations that NGOs were being unfairly dragged into the pork barrel controversy.

NGOs linked to Napoles had received more than P2 billion in PDAF between 2007 and 2009 from at least three senators and scores of members of the House of Representatives.

Senators Jinggoy Estrada, Ramon Revilla Jr. and Juan Ponce Enrile are now facing plunder charges before the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with the scam. –  With Jess Diaz, Edu Punay