EDITORIAL - No deterrent

On a monthly salary of P37,000, Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia allegedly managed to increase his peso bank deposits from P5.26 million in 1999 to P92.81 million in 2004.Prosecutors say his private dollar deposits also ballooned from $19,500 to nearly $1.9 million during the same period.

Garcia, who served as military comptroller, is estimated to have accumulated about P303.27 million in wealth, whose sources cannot be explained if his soldier’s pay and benefits would serve as basis. Prosecutors accuse him of skimming funds from procurement contracts of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, expenses earmarked for the joint Balikatan war games between the AFP and US forces, reimbursements for United Nations peacekeeping operations of the AFP, and interagency transfers. The funds, according to prosecutors, were funneled to Garcia’s personal account using the name of the AFP.

Garcia would not have been caught if his wife Clarita had not submitted a signed statement detailing what she described as the sources of the family’s wealth to customs authorities at the San Francisco Airport, where their two sons were apprehended in 2003 for failure to declare $100,000 in cash in their possession. The ombudsman at the time, Simeon Marcelo, got hold of the statement and built a plunder case against Garcia, who was court-martialed, convicted, dismissed from the service and tried by the Sandiganbayan for perjury and plunder, which could put him away for life. His sons are also facing charges in the United States.

On Dec. 16, 2010, however, the Sandiganbayan approved a plea bargain that Garcia struck, freeing him on P60,000 bail, allowing him to plead guilty to the lesser offense of direct bribery and facilitating money laundering, and letting him keep half of the P303.27 million he is accused of amassing illegally.

While the legal system allows plea bargaining, Garcia is the highest ranking military officer to be arrested and tried for plunder. His case is supposed to serve as a powerful warning to the AFP about the wages of corruption. The plea bargain approved by the anti-graft court, however, is merely a slap on the wrist that cannot serve as a deterrent to venality in the AFP. This week the Supreme Court suspended the plea deal. Making the restraint permanent will provide the deterrence.