FORMER Compostela town mayor Gilbert Wagas was committed to the National Penitentiary at 4 p.m. yesterday to start serving his 20- to 40-year prison term for malversation of public funds.

He is also perpetually disqualified from joining the government.

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One question remains unanswered, however. Where is the money?

The Oct. 8, 2001-decision of the anti-graft court’s 4th division does not reveal what happened to the amount, which mostly came from the National Aid for Government Units.

The amount, reaching P376,618.65, was supposedly taken from the treasury between October 1991 and March 1992, the Sandiganbayan said. It was taken with the alleged connivance of the town treasurer, Dominador Maravillas Jr., whom the Sandiganbayan also convicted.

The 11-page ruling instead shows that Wagas issued a Philippine Commercial International Bank check to Maravillas as guarantee that he would liquidate the cash advances he made to get the missing money.

However, the check, dated Oct. 15, 19992, was for P300,000 only and, thus, did not fully cover the missing amount.

Worse, Maravillas testified that the check bounced when he deposited it with a bank in March of the following year.

It had been drawn against an account with insufficient funds.

The two are liable to pay back the amount as a fine. Payment, though, does not extinguish their actual liability, per decision penned by then associate justice Rodolfo
Palattao and approved by then Sandiganbayan presiding justice Francis Garchitorena.

A Commission on Audit (COA) inquiry resulted in the filing of the case that led to Wagas and Maravillas’ conviction and Wagas’ subsequent arrest, authorized by a bench warrant, outside a coffee shop in SM City Cebu last Wednesday.

Late

While the conviction came in 2001 yet, it did not immediately become executory because Wagas elevated the matter to the Supreme Court via a petition for review on certiorari.

The Supreme Court, however, denied it in a minute resolution dated Sept. 16, 2002, saying it was filed late, resulting in the issuance of a bench warrant dated July 14, 2003. It was this same warrant that was used to arrest Wagas last Wednesday.

NBI 7 agent Renato Mandawe, who has since been assigned elsewhere, tried to serve the warrant but was not able to do so. NBI 7 Executive Officer Ernesto Macabare said Mandawe returned the warrant to the Sandiganbayan after being told by Wagas’ wife that the latter was in Manila working on his case with the Sandiganbayan.

“We do not know what happened after that,” Macabare said.

The missing funds were first uncovered by COA on March 17, 1992.

It took time before the case got elevated to the Sandiganbayan, with anti-graft prosecutors only able to present their first and only witness, State Auditor Josephine Daclan, on June 23, 1998.

It was Daclan who prepared the audit report that was presented during the Sandiganbayan proceeding and which showed the shortage in Maravillas’ cash collections.

But Maravillas, who was presented on May 22, 2000, did not own up to the liability. Instead, he claimed that the money was advanced by the mayor and that it didn’t even pass through him.

Wagas supposedly took it directly from revenue collectors and the assistant town treasurer.

“It is no defense for accused Maravillas to say that the money advanced by the accused Wagas never came into his possession.

As the municipal treasurer, he is supposed to be the person who finally determines whether the cash advance being made is allowed or disallowed for some reason,” the ruling read.

Advances

Presented first on Nov. 4, 1999, Wagas testified that the cash advances he made were covered by an ordinance and that the money was classified as resource development intelligence funds.

The Sandiganbayan did not give credence to this, though, with the decision citing how Wagas failed to present evidence substantiating his claim.

“In fact, the details of how and where the funds were spent were not even mentioned in his testimony. It is worthwhile to note that said accused was in bad faith at the very onset as he was even the one who certified and approved the disbursement vouchers covering the cash advances he made,” the Sandiganbayan ruled.

The penalty against the two reached 20 to 40 years because, based on the Sandiganbayan decision, no mitigating circumstance could be found.

And while both pointed at each other as at fault over the loss of the money, the anti-graft court found it as “further proof that they indeed had the plot to defraud the government.” (KNR)