Court junks case vs winning bidder in LTO project

MANILA, Philippines -  A Mandaluyong court has dismissed for lack of probable cause the falsification case filed against the winning joint-venture bidder in the Motor Vehicle Standardization Project of the Land Transportation Office (LTO).

In a three-page decision dated Feb. 4, Judge Monique Quisumbing-Ignacio of the Mandaluyong City Regional Trial Court Branch 209 ruled that the documents submitted by Power Plates Development Concepts Inc. and Dutch company J. Knieriem B.V. Goes (JKG) were not the required financial statements, “but this does not necessarily follow that the documents are falsified.”

In August last year, a case was filed against the two companies for allegedly submitting a falsified financial statement to qualify for a  public bidding conducted by the Department of Transportation for the LTO project.

The document was the purported audited financial statements of JKG submitted during the bidding on May 8, 2013.

The act was allegedly in violation of Section 65 of Republic Act 9184, the Government Procurement Reform Act.

In a resolution dated Aug. 26, 2016, Assistant State Prosecutor Ricardo Estrabo ruled that the documents submitted were not JKG’s financial statements but the company’s 2011 annual accounts issued by the Chamber of Commerce of The Hague in Netherlands.