Senate eyes raps vs more PhilHealth officials

MANILA, Philippines — The Senate may file complaints before the Office of the Ombudsman against Health Secretary Francisco Duque III and other officials of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. who were not included in the list of those charged by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for alleged anomalies in PhilHealth, Sen. Panfilo Lacson said yesterday.

Lacson said as far as senators are concerned – after they convened into one special committee to investigate the multibillion-peso anomalies at the state firm – that Duque, former PhilHealth senior vice president Rodolfo del Rosario and other officials are culpable for various criminal and administrative misdeeds.

“We’re keeping our options open. We can initiate the filing of cases against people not included by the (DOJ-led) task force. Nothing prevents us from going to the ombudsman as one body,  the Senate or Congress – if the House of Representatives will join us because they also conducted an investigation,” Lacson said in an interview on dzBB in Filipino.

He said the senators respect the findings of the DOJ as far as its preliminary investigation is concerned, even as the chamber stands by its own findings based on the probe of the committee of the whole.

He said he was tasked by Senate President Vicente Sotto III to provide Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra documents considered by the committee as evidence of anomalies.

The DOJ, he said, is not yet done with its probe so there is still the possibility that Duque, Del Rosario and other officials will be charged in another round of filings.

Lacson said Sotto told him that according to his sources in the task force, there is evidence pointing at Duque.

The senator also said he was also seriously studying to move that some of the funds allocated to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) under its proposed budget for 2021 that are suspected to be pork, be given instead to PhilHealth to augment its funds.

At least P396 billion in the DPWH’s proposed budget are in corruption-prone lump sums, he said.