Solon tells GMA: Don’t listen to Desierto

Misamis Oriental Rep. Oscar Moreno urged President Arroyo yesterday to ignore the appeal of Ombudsman Aniano Desierto for her not to intervene in the P5.3-billion tax credit scam that the Lakas congressman has claimed is headed for a whitewash.

"She should not listen to Desierto. When I asked her last Friday to intervene, I merely asked her to do her job, to do her constitutional duty of executing the laws of the land," Moreno said.

Reacting to the lawmaker’s plea, the Ombudsman cautioned Mrs. Arroyo against interfering or intervening in his job, saying his office is an independent constitutional body.

Meanwhile, the Senate may reopen its previous investigation into the tax credit scam amid allegations that the Ombudsman engineered a whitewash, Senate President Franklin Drilon said yesterday.

Drilon disclosed the Senate ways and means committee earlier recommended the prosecution of erring officials and other parties who benefited from the fraudulent sale of tax credit certificates.

"I will look into the report," Drilon said.

Moreno said the scam involves billions in revenues that syndicates have absconded with and which the President and the executive branch should try to recover.

"If the executive does all it can to recover the money, that is its job, that is its duty. That is not interfering in the Ombudsman’s functions," he said.

He said Desierto’s warning that Mrs. Arroyo’s intervention in the tax scam could be a ground for her impeachment "is a veiled threat that telegraphs the Ombudsman’s extreme arrogance."

The President’s Lakas partymate pointed out that Mrs. Arroyo has no choice but to support the special presidential task force investigating the tax scam and whose recommendations the Ombudsman has been ignoring.

"Let us not forget that the task force is a creation of the executive branch. It is very much a part of the executive branch," he said.

He stressed that if the President allows Desierto to seriously undermine and fatally cripple the task force, she would be allowing the Ombudsman to destroy the branch of government that she heads.

In a related development, the three representatives in the House of the leftist group Bayan Muna will file today a second impeachment complaint against Desierto.

Satur Ocampo, Crispin Beltran and Liza Maza said their complaint is based on Moreno’s exposé that the Ombudsman is trying to whitewash the P5.3-billion tax credit scam involving the Chingkoe group of companies, Petron and Shell.

Ocampo, a former communist leader, said Desierto has not sufficiently answered the Misamis congressman’s detailed accusations and has only resorted to the "convenient and diversionary tactic of name-calling."

The Bayan Muna leader accused the Ombudsman of allegedly having used his power and influence to dodge previous impeachment attempts.

"But he must be taught a lesson: that he is not above the law, that he is not exempted from public investigation. He must be made to answer the serious accusations against him," he said.

Ocampo and his two colleagues urged Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. to support their impeachment case against Desierto.

They said the case presents De Venecia a golden opportunity to show the nation that the House under him is serious in helping the government lessen if not eliminate graft and corruption.

The filing of the second impeachment complaint today could stymie House action on the recommendation of its justice committee to dismiss the first complaint for lack of substance.

The chamber is scheduled to vote this week on the committee report.

The first complaint was filed by lawyer Ernesto Francisco and endorsed by Moreno and several congressmen, including the three Bayan Muna representatives. It charged Desierto with bribery.

The justice committee overwhelmingly voted to throw it out, with members from Lakas, Nationalist People’s Coalition and the opposition crossing party lines to clear the beleaguered Ombudsman.

Sen. Blas Ople, for his part, found it ironic that the lead prosecutor in the plunder case filed by the administration against former President Joseph Estrada is himself suspected of graft.

"The business community, here and abroad, is already watching how the administration will handle Desierto, the graft and corruption investigator who is now being accused of graft and corruption himself," Ople noted.

"Can Desierto now enter the courtroom against Estrada and prosecute him without feeling that he himself is being suspected of something?" he added. — With Aurea Calica, Matthew Estabillo