Till now Ombudsman has not helped Rabusa

Whistle-blowing Col. George Rabusa had to scrounge for P200,000 cash last week to reproduce his charge sheet against Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia. That’s one more proof perhaps that the Office of the Ombudsman is uninterested in pursuing any rap against the former Armed Forces comptroller. If it were keen, it would have filed the case itself, using state resources, instead of leaving the retired colonel by his lonesome. And it would have done so as far back as January, when Rabusa first divulged personal knowledge and evidence of billion-peso plunder. The Ombudsman is empowered to initiate investigations motu propio, even if only from news reports — more so if from congressional testimonies, like Rabusa’s.

Rabusa sounded frustrated narrating his money woes Thursday. He had filed the plunder case with the Department of Justice a month ago. This was after noticing that then-Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez and deputies, all being grilled in congressional hearings for their dubious plea bargain with Garcia, were indifferent to his exposés. When the DOJ set the case for preliminary investigation, Rabusa had to start complying with technical requirements. The most basic was to submit 32 sets of the charge sheet: for the prosecutors, the 17 accused, the corroborating witnesses, and himself. So he had to photocopy his 85-page affidavit and attach hundreds of pages of documentary evidence. At one point he begged the DOJ for a little more time, and some nuns to donate fasteners and help bind the papers.

Rabusa’s travails sound trivial, but not in light of the implications. He is accusing not only Garcia, under whom he served as budget officer, of diverting military allocations into their pockets. Charged as well are three former Armed Forces of the Philippines chiefs of staff Diomedio Villanueva, Roy Cimatu, and Efren Abu. There’s also Garcia’s predecessor as comptroller, Lt. Gen. Jacinto Ligot. And there are active-duty officers: Maj. Gen. Benito de Leon, Colonels Carlos Tomas Donato, Roy Devesa, Gilbert Gapay and Roberto Arevalo, Navy Capt. Kenneth Paglinawan, and Maj. Emerson Angulo. Plus retired ones: Maj. Generals Hilario Atendido and Epineto Logico, and Lt. Col. Ernesto Paranis. Lastly, two civilians: overstaying military auditor Divina Cabrera, and long-time AFP Finance Center chief accountant Generoso del Castillo. Former defense secretary Angelo Reyes would have been included, had he not taken his own life at the height of Rabusa’s exposés.

Rabusa’s lawyer Noel Malaya said the case was airtight because of Rabusa’s first-hand knowledge and the paper trail of plunder. Allegedly in 1999-2003 over a billion pesos in budgets for soldiers’ pay, munitions and operations went missing. These were illicitly moved into fictitious intelligence projects, then divvied up by the conspirators. The chiefs of staff purportedly received welcome and going-away presents in the tens of millions of pesos.

Two witnesses are listed: retired Lt. Col. Romeo Mateo, who once handled special projects for the AFP civil relations service; and Perla Valerio, former chief of the fiscal branch during Ligot and Garcia’s terms as comptroller. It is yet unclear if Rabusa’s ex-assistant, Air Force Col. Antonio Ramon Lim, would join the corroborators. Lim had testified in the Senate and House of Reps hearings to help Rabusa explain the illegal “conversions” of military funds.

Those accused who appeared at the congressional inquiry, among them Villanueva, Cimatu and Abu, have denied any malversation or cover-up. Some of them and their spouses had become friends of Rabusa, who thus agonized over implicating them. Benedictine nuns have been helping secure him, as they did Jun Lozada and Dante Madriaga, two of several whistleblowers of the NBN-ZTE scam of 2007.

In congressional hearings and press interviews, Rabusa admitted having partaken of the loot. With easy money by the millions in hand, he fell into vice, like gambling and booze. He attributed to bad karma his wife’s ensuing cancer and his paralyzing stroke. Having lost everything, Rabusa said, his daughters persuaded him to come out and clear the family name. In doing so, he applied with the DOJ for immunity from suit arising from his Congress exposés, and protection as state witness.

The plunder case filed by Rabusa is different from the earlier one that the Ombudsman withdrew against Garcia under a plea bargain. The Sandiganbayan last week upheld the deal that it accepted in May 2010 on condition that Garcia surrender P135 million of his P303-million hoard. That other case stemmed from the confiscation by US Customs of $100,000 cash that Garcia’s two sons tried to sneak into the San Francisco international airport in December 2003. Garcia and sons separately had requested US authorities to return the money, to no avail. Wife Clarita then wrote Customs to justify their ownership of the amount. She swore that she and Garcia routinely took travel perks and kickbacks from foreign and Filipino military suppliers. Commissioner on Audit Heidi Mendoza, as state auditor, also had investigated Garcia in 2004-2005 and testified against him in 2007-2008. Supposedly the general personally diverted P200 million in UN reimbursements from the official depository to a private bank, where P50 million ultimately vanished. The court ignored all this as weak evidence.

Reports in 2004 had linked Rabusa and del Castillo as Garcia cronies. Rabusa was charged with plunder, but acquitted. Then came his change of heart to expose the sleaze. But till last week, after Gutierrez resigned to avoid impeachment trial and the Sandiganbayan cleared Garcia of plunder, the Ombudsman has not helped Rabusa with his cause.

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