IN A recent series of investigative reports by the Inquirer.net, no less than 28 lawmakers from both houses of Congress – the Senate and the House of Representatives – were implicated in an alleged racketeering scam that purportedly defrauded the Philippine people of as much as P10 billion in ‘ghost project’ funding.
According to sworn statements submitted to the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and interviews with the Inquirer, five senators and 23 congressmen allegedly allowed their Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) – or ‘pork barrel’ – to be exposed to the scam.
Six witnesses (all former employees, including a cousin) point to businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles as the alleged mastermind in the massive fraud.
In their sworn affidavits, the whistleblowers said that JLN Corp. (named after Napoles’ initials) defrauded billions of pesos from the government by requesting for pork barrel funds to be pumped into ghost projects.
Once approved, PDAF funds would be paid out to bogus organizations that were the supposed implementors of the ghost projects. The operation ultimately turns paper into cash.
According to Inquirer.net’s investigation, the scam involved appointing dummy CEOs of the organizations, forging letters from local government officials, and concocting falsified receipts — all to create an illusion of legitimacy in the ghost projects. Once the project funding requests are approved, and the funds are paid out to the dummy organizations, the money goes straight to Napoles, said the whistleblowers.
“These bags [of money] were piled in the master bedroom and in the bathtub of her bathroom,” Benhur Luy, star witness and cousin of Napoles, who used to serve as her personal assistant, told Inquirer.net.
The fraudulent operation supposedly ran for at least 10 years. This poses the grim possibility that Pres. Benigno Aquino’s ‘Daang Matuwid’ mantra for the government may have been stained with wrongdoing under his watch.
Witnesses alleged that cooperative legislators and staffers, who helped facilitate the funding request, receive a huge cut from the drawn out PDAF money.
As much as 40 to 60 percent of the allocated funds would allegedly be given as commission to public servants, according to Luy. .
This picture paints the reality that in spite of all the checks and balances of the state, it is still very possible for unscrupulous individuals or groups to conduct fraud on a massive scale.
This is basically billions of hard-earned taxpayers’ money stolen right under the noses of ‘public servants.’
In the traditional perspective of common-folks on corruption, officials would skim about 10, 20, or even 30 percent of government funds when implementing public works like roads, bridges, school buildings, and housing projects. Yet, the infrastructure would still be built, albeit of substandard quality.
Public school students can still go to school, motorists can traverse roads, and cheap housing can still be had by all.
In the case of this scam, public funds go to dummy corporations who promise to implement ghost projects which will ultimately benefit nobody but the cash collectors. Nobody wins but the “greedy ghosts,” as Inquirer.net referred to them in an editorial.
But that’s not to say that the “traditional corruption model” is better off.
Stealing public money, no matter how small or large, should never be condoned.
Public trust in government institutions will further crumble if this issue is allowed to be forgotten when the next big controversy comes along.
As Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano told reporters in Manila, the credibility and integrity of the legislature in conducting inquiries into corruption in government will be compromised severely, if this is not resolved anytime soon.
“It’s about, do people trust [the institution] or not… How will you investigate if they think some senators dipped their fingers into the fertilizer scam? So I think it’s very important that in the next few months, those involved should either be held accountable or charged or cleared so the trust can be maintained,” Cayetano said in an Inquirer.net report.
On Friday, Commission on Audit (COA) Chairperson Ma. Grace Pulido – Tan revealed to Philstar.com that the audit report on the PDAF of lawmakers is being finalized and will be released next week.
The report is expected to “identify more legislators and more questionable NGOs that received government money,” said Philstar.com.
“Whoever will be hit will be hit, what can we do?,” Pulido said, noting that there are lawmakers from the administration party, who also gave away their PDAF to shady groups and who were not mentioned in Luy’s testimonial.
“I think the P10 billion being mentioned is over a period of 10 years. Our PDAF report is only for a period of three years, 2007 to 2009, and more than P10 billion, definitely,” she said.
Now should be the perfect opportunity for the Aquino administration to prove to the Filipino people that it is ready to uphold its ‘Daang Matuwid’ mantra, no matter what the cost — especially since he will be delivering his State of the Nation Address soon.
(AJPress)