Chiz to 3 colleagues: Explain fund misuse

MANILA, Philippines - Team PNoy re-electionist Sen. Francis Escudero urged yesterday three of his Senate colleagues to explain the alleged misuse of nearly P200 million in their pork barrel funds.

In a radio interview, Escudero said Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr. should explain the Commission on Audit (COA) report alleging that their funds ended up with a non-existent private entity identified as Pangkabuhayan Foundation.

He said the issue is not what prompted the COA to release its report in the middle of the election campaign but that a huge amount of taxpayers’ money had been misused.

He opposed the proposal of his three colleagues for the Senate to look into the alleged fund irregularity.

“If the Senate conducts an investigation, people will say we are investigating ourselves. If the Senate clears my three colleagues, there will be claims of a whitewash. Let other agencies do it,” he said.

There have been calls for the Office of the Ombudsman to start an inquiry by asking the COA to send it a copy of its audit report. The ombudsman’s office is empowered to initiate an investigation on its own.

Escudero said there have been criminal cases filed against some lawmakers for diverting their pork barrel funds to private foundations.

“Some gave funds to foundations that turned out to be non-existent. Others gave funds to foundations organized by family members. This is the reason why I don’t give funds to these groups,” he said.

Enrile and Estrada are among the leaders of Vice President Jejomar Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), which has claimed that the release of the COA findings was “politically motivated” and a “desperate act” on the part of the ruling Liberal Party (LP).

However, Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone, a Team PNoy spokesman, said the administration and the LP have not launched a demolition campaign against Binay’s alliance.

“They are barking up the wrong tree. They only have themselves to blame. All the scandals hounding them are self-inflicted,” he said.

For her part, COA chair Grace Pulido-Tan said no politics was involved in the release of her agency’s audit findings.

Binay said UNA leaders were being targeted to bring down his alliance and its senatorial ticket.

He said he expects that his old cases at the Sandiganbayan would soon be resurrected.

Enrile and Estrada have claimed that they did not know that their funds ended up with a bogus foundation.

But the COA said the two senators’ offices nominated Pangkabuhayan Foundation as the recipient of their funds. Estrada allocated more than P100 million to the group, while Enrile gave it P77 million.

Another Team PNoy senatorial candidate, former senator Ramon Magsaysay Jr., said the latest COA report indicates that a syndicate skimming funds from lawmakers’ pork barrel allocations still exists in the Department of Agriculture.

It was Magsaysay, as Senate agriculture committee chairman, who investigated the P728-million fertilizer fund scam of 2004, also exposed by the audit commission.

The money was given to the agriculture department and a large part of it went to several bogus foundations.