Saturday, August 16, 2008 Lampposts case proof 'solid'
AN official at the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas denied allegations the agency hastily filed anti-graft charges against those it believed were responsible for the purchase of overpriced lampposts.
Assistant Ombudsman Virginia Palanca-Santiago, who oversaw the fact-finding investigation on the 2007 controversy, said the case was rock-solid when it reached the court.
“We wouldn’t have filed it had we not felt that it was sufficient,” Santiago, who at the time of the filing headed the agency’s fact-finding bureau, said.
Santiago said that the motion the Office of the Special Prosecutor submitted to the Sandiganbayan in Manila—to withdraw the information and conduct a reinvestigation—was as much the request of the respondents, as it was the desire of government prosecutors.
“Our strongest evidence was the Powe (program of works and estimates). You cannot simply copy the figures given by a contractor and use it in making a Powe,” she said.
The Powe is a technical document used as basis for determining the amount of money to be earmarked for a particular project or purchase.
“We also established that the amounts were highly overpriced based on the import documents we obtained from the Bureau of Customs when the items were delivered,” Santiago said.
The documents were prepared separately by Gampik Construction and Development Inc. and the Fabmik Construction and Equipment Corp. and submitted to the Bureau of Customs when they brought the items into the country from China.
She said many of the respondents, former Mandaue City mayor Thadeo Ouano included, filed motions and petitions all the way to the Court of Appeals to stop the case from getting filed.
In one case, ex-DPWH 7 director Roberto Lala, assistant directors Gloria Dindin and Marlina Alvizo, division chiefs Pureza Fernandez, Luis Galang and Cresencio Balogor told the appellate court that the case should not reach the Sandiganbayan because they were not given the chance to participate in the preliminary investigation.
They accused the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas of withholding documents obtained during the fact-finding investigation from them and argued that these documents were essential if they were to answer the charges.
“We checked our records and found out that the documents they were referring to were ones we obtained from their own offices. We presumed that they did not need to be furnished copies because they were already in possession of the documents in question,” Santiago said.
Still, the appellate court ruled in their favor six days after the Office of the Ombudsman transmitted the case to the Sandiganbayan.
“By law, we no longer had any jurisdiction over the case because it was already with the Sandiganbayan at that time,” she said.
“But some (Sandiganbayan) divisions said they wanted the motions resolved first. So we decided to leave the matter to the Office of the Special Prosecutor and they ultimately filed a motion to withdraw so that it could be treated,” she explained. (KNR)
