LPs in Cabinet fooling P-Noy

The NBI unusually was fast in the case of National Food Authority chief Arthur Juan. It took only one month to find him liable for extorting P15 million from a rice adulterator. Never mind that Juan, once a top exec of San Miguel Corp., had come highly recommended last June by the Makati Business Club and decent past Cabinet men Senen Bacani and Cielito Habito. Never mind that the accuser’s tale sounds so incredible in that Juan used his listed mobile number to text him the payoff instructions and his personal bank account as drop-off. Never mind that, as Juan’s superior Presidential Assistant Francis Pangilinan notes, there’s now a smart phone app, downloadable for free, to clone mobile SIMs. The NBI even leaked its report to the press — as if to pre-empt Justice Sec. Leila de Lima and President Noynoy Aquino.

Yet how come the NBI is so slow to investigate fully documented, thus plausible, cases of corruption? Is it because the officials involved are P-Noy’s ruling Liberal Party mates?

Take, for one, the ten months the NBI took to close its probe of the $30-million extortion try in July 2012 by then-MRT-3 head Al S. Vitangcol from Czech train maker Inekon Corp. No less than the Czech ambassador and the Inekon CEO had complained in Apr. 2013. The NBI stepped in three months later with a promise to finish in four months, yet took another six. And in the end it cleared Vitangcol and three cohorts in PH Trams, the MRT-3’s inept maintenance firm.

It was too late to save Vitangcol, though. By then he had been exposed of granting the half-billion-peso contract to PH Trams where his uncle-in-law is incorporator-director (see Gotcha, 26 May 2014). Yet in that too is an NBI mystery. Despite official papers — at MRT-3, Dept. of Transport, Securities and Exchange Commission — to nail Vitangcol, the uncle-in-law, and five other incorporator-directors, the NBI never investigated. Political gossip is that Vitangcol might squeal on superiors — Transport Sec. and LP president Joseph Emilio Abaya and U-Sec. Jose Perpetuo Lotilla — his co-signatories in the PH Trams contract. Notably, the PH Trams incorporator-directors are LP officers. Chairman Marlo dela Cruz, now with present P63 million-a-month maintenance firm Global Inc., is Abaya’s compadre in LP-Pangasinan.

Fifteen other anomalous multibillion-peso deals at the DOTC beg for scrutiny. The NBI has not touched any. Meantime, Vitangcol is worming his way into the circles of anti-graft clergymen by presenting himself as victim-fall guy.

And because he can get away with it, Abaya sees no shame to fool P-Noy. In recent days he deceived the boss that the non-maintenance and frequent breakdowns of the MRT-3 is not the fault of PH Trams/Global’s dela Cruz. Blaming it all on the private builder-owner Metro Rail Transit Corp., he is asking for P53 billion for the DOTC to buy out MRT-3. Notably, due to a 2008 bond purchase, two state banks now control 78 percent of MRT-3.

Abaya also has wangled P2.5 billion from P-Noy to overhaul the trains, tracks, signaling system, power supply, and stations. This work is due on the railways’ 15th year, 2015. Unstated is that MRT-3 was allowed to deteriorate since 2012 under multibillion-peso maintenance contractor dela Cruz precisely because they knew there would be a total-overhaul budget in 2015.

Back at the NFA, the NBI has exempted Juan’s predecessor Orlan Calayag too from any probe. With Agriculture Sec. Proceso Alcala and Deputy Ludovico Jarina, Calayag had overpriced by P1.2 billion the NFA’s rice imports from Vietnam in 2013. The figures are there for review: at the NFA, and industry websites on daily global rice trading, as well as hotel bookings in Makati, Hanoi and Singapore with Vietnamese government counterparts-exporters.

Records are extant too of Calayag, Alcala and Jarina’s P1-billion overprice of the cargo handling for 2014’s rice imports. The bidding rules and supply contract stated that Vietnam is to hire only a cargo handler from the NFA’s accreditation list — and the list contained only one such company, which then proceeded to charge a fee $30-per-ton more than free market rates.

Calayag and Alcala’s fakery are documented too. Alcala had ex-congressional aide Calayag appointed to the NFA Council, antedated July 2013, when there was no vacancy. He had him promoted to NFA chief in Jan. 2013, yet Calayag submitted his credentials to the vetting agency only six months later. That promotion was in breach of law that requires the NFA head to be a natural-born Filipino — and Calayag had acquired US citizenship six years earlier. The NBI has chosen to ignore all that. Alcala is LP treasurer, the chief fundraiser.

And because he too can get away with it, Alcala has no qualms to lie to P-Noy. In a recent Cabinet meeting P-Noy asked Alcala where the Bureau of Plant Industry ex-chief Carlito Barron is, having been found by de Lima in cahoots with smugglers in the food price spikes last Apr.-Aug. Alcala replied that Barron is in the freezer. Yet only two months prior, one Dennis Guerrero officially had announced that Barron was appointed Alcala’s special technical assistant. And who is Guerrero? He used to be Calayag’s special aide at the NFA; when kicked out in June by Pangilinan, Alcala promoted them both to assistant secretary and chief of staff, respectively.

P-Noy’s worst troublemaker is Budget Sec. Florencio Abad. This LP national leader concocted the Disbursement Acceleration Program, which the Supreme Court has illegalized. Because his signature appears in the P157-billion releases, P-Noy stands to be charged with fund misuse upon stepping down from office. For this reason, he has threatened to team up with Congress to clip the SC’s powers. He also is planning to lift constitutional term limits in order to rule forever — against the wishes of his family and closest supporters.

Due to the LPs around him, P-Noy’s claims to anti-corruption ring hollow. Sure, he has deposed a Chief Justice for concealed wealth, and jailed three opposition senators for plunder. But he also abets the crimes of his own men, which makes him an accomplice.

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