Palace orders deputy ombud: Explain

Saturday, December 10, 2011

AS DEPUTY Ombudsman-Visayas, Pelagio Apostol is used to sending orders requiring public officials to answer formal charges of malversation, abuse of authority, neglect and misconduct.

He, however, may not be so used to receiving them.

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Undersecretary Rolando Geron, acting on orders of Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr., gave Apostol 15 days to answer the same charges: malversation, abuse of authority, neglect and misconduct.

“You are hereby directed to submit… your counter-affidavit/comment under oath and show cause why no administrative action should be taken against you. Failure to do so will cause the resolution f this case based on the evidence on record,” Geron wrote.

Apostol, main lecturer in the Cebu celebration of the International Anti-Corruption Day last Friday, received the Oct. 13 order last Nov. 10 and submitted a 19-page counter-affidavit to the Office of the President last Nov. 24.

There, he denied all charges and asked that it be dismissed for lack of merit. He highlighted how he has had an otherwise “unsullied reputation in his entire career of government service.”

He said his track record “would bear out, particularly the big cases (he) handled starting as prosecutor of the Office of the Special Prosecutor and as a Director and Assistant Ombudsman in the OMB-Central Office,” he said.

Apostol said he “always guards his reputation with his life.”

Businessman Crisologo Saavedra had filed the complaint in April this year, about the same time Apostol declared his intent to apply for ombudsman, replacing Merceditas Gutierrez.

He asked that the Office of the President “impose preventive suspension” against the supposedly “untrustworthy Atty. Pelagio S. Apostol” and to “replace him with a reputable and honest Deputy Ombudsman without delay.”

Among the grounds Saavedra cited in the filing of his complaint was Apostol’s loss of his government-issued vehicle, as established by a Commission on Audit (COA) report that ordered him to pay.

Likewise cited was Apostol’s supposed act of asking an associate graft investigator to find evidence that would clear Cebu Gov. Gwen Garcia from any liability over the allegedly anomalous Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) construction project.

The third included his act of recommending the disapproval of a graft investigator’s finding on the Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority’s allegedly anomalous award of a multi-million-peso supply contract.

On the lost vehicle, an Isuzu Highlander that was taken in front of his own house, Apostol said it is already being looked into by the Internal Affairs Board of the Office of the Ombudsman. He cited how the rules don’t allow him to be charged for the same alleged crime before two agencies.

“Granting that this honorable office could legally take cognizance of the charge, there is no malversation of government property to speak of as there was no intent whatsoever to misappropriate government property,” he argued.

He also denied the charge that he protected Cebu provincial officials when his office did the fact-finding investigation on the CICC project, countering instead that some people in his office wanted to make him look bad and leaked “confidential information” and “outrageously false informations” relative to the CICC case.

“As of this date, the result of the CICC case could not be revealed yet. The final resolution of the case is still pending with OMB-Central Office,” he wrote.

The fact-finding investigation began in 2007 and the final evaluation report was sent to Manila on October 2009. It remains there.

And on his reversal of a graft investigator’s recommendation that the agency issue a cease-and-desist order to stop the award of a P100-million supply contract, Apostol said it was his job to do so.

Moreover, he added, the matter has been settled, with Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales issuing a final order, which upheld his recommendation.