EDITORIAL - Finally, indictments, but…

After an inquiry that lasted several months and the detention for contempt of three of the persons implicated in the deal, the Senate Blue Ribbon committee in the 18th Congress came up with its findings and recommendations on the apparent sweetheart deals awarded by the previous administration to Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp.

The draft report released in February 2022, however, never reached the plenary as several pro-administration senators in the previous Congress refused to sign it. Apparently, the main reason was that they disagreed with the recommendation to include Rodrigo Duterte in a criminal probe once his term as president ended.

In the draft report, Duterte’s former economic adviser, Chinese businessman Michael Yang, is accused of brokering the award of P10 billion in COVID medical supply contracts to Pharmally from 2020 to 2021. Yang had denied claims made by Pharmally officials that he was their financier and guarantor.

Pharmally bagged an initial P8 billion in COVID supply contracts just months after it was set up in September 2019 with a paid-up capital of only P625,000 and a fictitious address. It won another P2-billion supply deal in 2021. The purchases were made by the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management for the Department of Health.

DOH and PS-DBM officials, several of whom are no longer in office, were among 33 people who were preventively suspended for six months by the Office of the Ombudsman in an order dated March 20. The list is headed by the former director of the PS-DBM, Warren Rex Liong, who is currently the overall deputy ombudsman, and former PS-DBM chief Lloyd Christopher Lao. Nine of those suspended are from the DOH; the rest are former and current PS-DBM officials.

The suspension is in connection with administrative cases filed against them “for grave misconduct, gross neglect of duty, serious dishonesty, and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service.” The cases involve three deals with Pharmally for the supply of 51,400 RT-PCR test kits costing P4 billion.

The Senate Blue Ribbon committee in the previous Congress, headed by Richard Gordon, had recommended the filing of graft, corruption and plunder charges against Michael Yang, Pharmally executives as well as PS-DBM and DOH officials led at the time by Francisco Duque III.

Whether Yang and Pharmally executives as well as higher-ranking former officials will be indicted by government probers remains to be seen. The public also awaits the determination of any mastermind, and the identification of others who might have benefited personally from an anomaly that – if the charges prove accurate – betrayed public trust during the country’s worst public health emergency in a century. There must be no sacred cows in this case; selective justice is an injustice.