COA recalls Navy resident auditor

MANILA, Philippines –  Commission on Audit (COA) Chairman Reynaldo Villar yesterday confirmed the replacement of military resident auditor Divina Cabrera after she was implicated in the fund scandal in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

Villar said Cabrera has been ordered to report back to the COA Central Office and reassigned to the Office of the Cluster Director with no particular item or position.

Former military budget officer George Rabusa named Cabrera as the resident auditor of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) who allegedly got a percentage of the funds for approved intelligence projects and operations.

Rabusa testified before the Senate claiming

Cabrera had received bribes in her 13 years with the ISAFP from 1991 to 2005 before she was transferred to the Philippine Navy.

“She’ll (Cabrera) be required to comment on the issues and allegations brought up during the hearings of the Senate and House committees,” Villar said.

Villar said Cabrera would be allowed to explain her side on the accusations of Rabusa. He added COA had given Cabrera a security detail.

Villar had ordered a review of the assignment histories of COA’s resident auditors following the revelations of Rabusa in the Senate.

Villar said the review would determine if there are others who had been staying too long in a particular assignment, like Cabrera who had been the resident auditor of ISAFP for 13 years.

Ideally, Villar said, every resident auditor should be replaced or reassigned every three years.

Rabusa detailed the anomalies in the disbursement of funds of the military, claiming the ISAFP was used as a clearinghouse for multi-million funds that went into the pockets of some top military officials.

Rabusa appeared as a witness in the Senate investigating the plea bargaining agreement between former military comptroller Carlos Garcia and government prosecutors.

Garcia was accused of stealing more than P300 million from state coffers before the Sandiganbayan.

Parañaque Rep. Roilo Golez yesterday proposed that the right to plea bargain should not be available in case one is facing a plunder case.

Golez filed Bill 4180 seeking to amend Republic Act 7080, or the Plunder Law, to deny any person accused of violating the law the right to plea bargain, which involves offering to plead guilty to a lesser offense in exchange for the withdrawal of the plunder charge.

Under the bill, the Department of Justice would issue implementing rules and regulations.

The proposed non-availability of the right to plea bargain would not affect pending plunder cases.

Golez is proposing the amendment amid the controversy surrounding the plea bargaining agreement made by Garcia.

The deal, done last December, called for Garcia to plead to the lesser offenses of bribery and facilitating money laundering and for him to return to the government P135 million of the P303 million he is accused of plundering.

Garcia has already turned over to Gutierrez’s office about P50 million in peso and dollar deposits.

As its part in the bargain, the Ombudsman would withdraw the plunder charge Gutierrez’s predecessor, Simeon Marcelo, had filed against Garcia.

Golez said Congress had removed the right to enter into a plea bargaining agreement in instances where the offender is charged with violating the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

“With more reason that the denial of the resort to plea bargaining be effected in cases involving the atrocious crime of plunder,” he said.

The House committee on justice ended on Tuesday its inquiry into the Ombudsman-Garcia deal after approving a motion of Golez calling on Gutierrez to withdraw the agreement, now pending with the second division of the Sandiganbayan. – With Jess Diaz