COA has no evidence vs Bong, Cambe in pork scam - witness

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Audit (COA), which conducted an investigation into the pork barrel fund scam and came out with a special report detailing how government funds were misused, does not have any evidence at all that Senator Ramon Revilla Jr. or his former chief of staff Richard Cambe received money from Janet Lim Napoles.

Assistant Commissioner Susan Garcia, former head of the audit agency's special audits office, said voluminous documents studied by state auditors revealed irregularities but nothing to prove that the accused and their fellow respondents who are facing plunder and graft charges pocketed public funds.

"No sir," she told Associate Justice Rodolfo N. Ponferrada of the Sandiganbayan First Division Thursday when the magistrate asked her directly if COA, based on its investigation, has any evidence to show that Revilla and Cambe received any money from Napoles.

Garcia, testifying for the prosecution in a bail hearing, also told the anti-graft court that there is not a single document it has probed and is in possession with that bears the name of Janet Lim Napoles.

She however told Sandiganbayan magistrates that Revilla and Cambe still had participation in the alleged misuse of Pork barrel funds when the former picked specific non-government organizations (NGOs) as beneficiaries of his priority development assistance fund (PDAF).

Revilla, Garcia explained, told implementing agencies to allow his identified NGOs allegedly operated by Napoles to handle the implementation of what later truned out to be ghost projects and designated Cambe to be his authorized representative.

"What's your evidence to that statement?" asked Ponferrada which allowed the COA official to point to Revilla's endorsement letters identifying Napoles NGOs as recipients of his PDAF even though NGOs are not supposed to be picked because implementing agencies, under the General Appropriations Act, should conduct a public bidding.

When the magistrate asked whose names actually appeared in the documents looked into by COA if Napoles is not even there, Garcia said Benhur Luy and others were named as president and incorporators of the NGOs, respectively.

When First Division chairman Associate Justice Efren N. De La Cruz asked Garcia if the memoranda of agreement allegedly entered into by Cambe, the implementing agencies of government, and the Napoles NGOd has Revilla's signatures,  the witness replied in the negative.

However, she added that the endorsement letter of the senator identifying Cambe as his authorized representative shows his participation in the irregularity.

Garcia said Revilla himself confirmed the authenticity of his signatures in some 168 pieces of document that were sent to him for verification during the COA investigation.

Joel Bodegon, Revilla's lawyer, said he will have the signatures examined by a handwriting expert while informing the Sandiganbayan that the defense was denied access to original documents and instead allowed to have mere photocopies since day one.