Solgen, PCGG dip into foreign litigation fund

Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera and Presidential Commission on Good Government Commissioner Ricardo Abcede have again dipped into the anti-graft agency’s $59-million foreign litigation fund to travel to Singapore.

The STAR learned that Devanadera had brought along a lawyer from the Office of the Solicitor General.

PCGG sources said Abcede is commissioner in charge of the asset management department, not of litigating ill-gotten wealth cases, and therefore has no business traveling abroad.

Commissioner Narciso Nario, PCGG officer-in-charge, said Devanadera and Abcede have clearance from Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez for the 10-day mission to check on a pending case to recover some $37 million in forfeited assets of the late President Ferdinand Marcos in a bank in Singapore.

Sources told The STAR last September and October, Abcede and Devanadera had traveled separately to Europe and the US.

The Office of the Ombudsman is investigating the almost $1 million which OSG and PCGG officials have incurred for foreign travels in just six months.

The PCGG’s foreign litigation fund, deposited in the Philippine National Bank, was set up in January 2004 when the late Haydee Yorac was PCGG chairwoman.

It was meant to pay the legal fees of foreign lawyers retained by the government to represent it in ill-gotten wealth recovery cases in other countries.

However, The STAR learned the PCGG has started using the fund to pay for foreign travels of its commissioners, lawyers and rank-and-file personnel, as well as those of the OSG.

The $.958 million foreign travel expenses for the first half of 2008 does not include the travel expenses to Europe of PCGG Chairman Camilo Sabio and his wife; Commissioner Jaime Bautista and his wife; Commissioner Abcede; and other PCGG lawyers late last September shortly before Sabio went on indefinite leave of absence, sources told The STAR.

Last October, Devanadera, along with OSG and PCGG lawyers dipped into the foreign litigation fund to finance a two-week trip to the US to check on the Arelma account deposited with fallen New York stock brokerage firm Merril Lynch.