Sunday, March 16, 2008 Bayan Muna seeks LTO suspensions
THE party-list group Bayan Muna wants the anti-graft office to suspend 10 Land Transportation Office (LTO) officials they earlier charged for their alleged involvement in the syndicated illegal registration of smuggled vehicles.
Arman Perez, Bayan Muna Central Visayas secretary general, said the suspension will ensure that the evidence the anti-graft office requires, as well as the witnesses needed in its investigation, would be protected.
“Common sense dictates that something has to be done with dispatch to prevent any manipulation (of witnesses) and to ensure the integrity of these documents which, up to the present, are under the control of respondents,” he said in a motion addressed to Deputy Ombudsman Pelagio Apostol.
He lamented how the anti-graft office has not taken the initiative to order the preventive suspension, adding that the original complaint was filed last February yet.
Now moving
A source, however, said that the complaint Bayan Muna filed has been endorsed to the fact-finding bureau for case buildup and consolidated with another investigation on vehicle smuggling.
Incidents under case buildup don’t yet warrant preventive suspension.
Bayan Muna earlier accused 10 LTO officials, including its former Central Visayas director, of involvement in the syndicated illegal registration of smuggled vehicles.
Named respondents in the complaint were former LTO 7 director Alex Leyson, ex-assistant director Edgar Cabase, the agency’s incumbent resident ombudsman and Chief Legal Officer, Atty. Vicente Gador Jr., and the LTO Cebu City Registrar Aleta Pulga.
Likewise included in the complaint are Honorio Quiambao, the head of the LTO office in Diliman, Quezon City, Bernardo Borromeo of the LTO Talisay City Extension Office, Aurea Angcay of the Lapu-Lapu City Extension, Macario Getaruelas of the Tagbilaran City Extension in Bohol, Joel Maloloy-on, the incumbent LTO registrar in Tagbilaran, and Mandaue City LTO Registrar Fernado Avila.
The complaint moved for their immediate preventive suspension “to preserve the integrity of vital records and to prevent them from intimidating or otherwise influencing any and all witnesses who may want to testify.”
“The aforementioned LTO officials, by their acts or omission, had directly or indirectly participated, colluded in, consented to and/or condoned the illegal registration of smuggled or imported vehicles, resulting in substantial loss of government revenues,” the complaint read.
“This loss represents revenue that could have been used for social services like education or health,” he added in a separate interview.
Connivance
Highlighted in the complaint is the allegedly illegal registration of 43 imported vehicles whose registration was done somewhere else, but whose plates were all issued by the LTO in Diliman.
Of the vehicles, 26 were registered at the LTO in Cebu City, 15 from Toledo City and two from Tagbilaran City, according to a computer printout that, Perez said, Bayan Muna obtained from the LTO central office.
In an “explanation” attached to the complaint, the Bayan Muna complaint said the vehicles were all smuggled into the country and registered with the help of “unscrupulous registrars who are willing to dispense with the documentary requirements for a hefty asking price” of P50,000 to P70,000 per car.
“To avoid detection, these smuggled vehicles, although originally registered in Cebu, were issued license plates from LTO Diliman,” it read. (KNR)
