Malacañang ought to stop this racket at its Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency. Car rentals are being paid, for millions of pesos a month. Yet they’re all bogus. No vehicles actually are being rented, and the suppliers are inexistent. Obviously insiders are pocketing the money.
Example: 16 disbursements, each for P245,000, all for car rental, were made on Jan. 18, 2013. Payee was a fictitious SSMM Vehicle Rental Services.
On the same day nine other disbursements were made, for P235,000, P240,000, and P245,000. Payee was equally fictitious BEMV Transport Services.
On Jan. 30, 2013, came 12 more disbursements, for P200,000, P220,000, P222,000, and P240,000. Payees were the same inexistent SSMM and BEMV.
That month alone P8,832,000 was paid to the two firms. Allegedly, one Jean P. cashed all the checks, then delivered the loot to the PDEA budget, finance, and audit sections.
The racket went on in Feb. and Mar. 2013, with P11,007,000 and P7,975,000 laundered through SSMM and BEMV.
In the first quarter of 2013 alone P27,814,000 was filched. And that’s only from fakes car rentals. There can only be other rackets.
The PDEA runs after drug traffickers who thrive on addicts. Some of its officers apparently are addicted to money not their own.
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And who’s this high ranker at the civil aviation authority loved more by airlines than his peers? As shown in airline execs’ letters to him, this official gives in to their frequent requests for leniency or exemption from safety and service standards. All this, to the point of surrendering the regulatory fuctions for which the authority exists to begin with.
Of late, the official has succumbed to airlines’ pressures to reduce their subsidy of travel accommodations for safety inspectors. In spending less on such expense, airlines can afford to delay compliance with the inspectors’ safety impositions.
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Everyone’s free to back or bash VP Jejomar Binay on alleged sleaze. If justice runs its course, he will be cleared or jailed.
What should alarm us is the militaristic way of one of Binay’s three senator-accusers. That is, in pronouncing him guilty solely from say-so and not documents, then challenging him to prove innocence. That’s what Marcos’s torturers did to tens of thousands of dissenters during Martial Law. We who are old enough to have lived through such horrors must warn against the likely resurgence, even if in seemingly milder forms.
To be sure, unlike in the Marcos days, nobody is pulling out Binay’s nails, banging his head on the wall, or electrocuting his genitals. He merely has been invited to give his side at the Senate inquiry. And he has chosen to snub it, unlike under Martial Law when an “invitation” for questioning at the military camp meant months of forced vacation. Still that one militaristic senator is subjecting Binay to the same Marcos ruse of accusing first, then asking questions later.
This goes against the democratic way. Normally the burden is placed on the accuser to prove guilt, not on the accused to show otherwise. That’s because it is easy to make an accusation, even from hallucination or malice.
So far have spoken against Binay a political ally-turned-bitter foe, ex-subordinates, and in periphery a veteran state auditor. Hopefully they can back their narratives with direct proof of P1.3-billion kickback in a car park construction during Binay’s Makati mayoralty. That would put Binay away for good. Same with the assertion of Binay’s secret ownership of a 350-hectare country estate, with huge orchid and maze gardens, and “air-conditioned piggery.” Yet so far it’s all only the say-so of one witness, versus tax and asset documents to the contrary. Added to this is the vivid recollection of the militaristic senator of having been invited to the estate’s recent inaugural by its registered owner. For the militaristic senator, that owner is actually Binay’s “front man.” His proof: that Chinoy oddly pushed through with the inaugural last Aug. during the Chinese ghost month when no project should be started, at the height of a typhoon at that.
This is the same militarist who attempted a coup d’état in 2003 against the civilian government. Fortunately he and his cohorts failed. Still it should be recalled that at the height of that mutiny they called the press to a briefing at a posh hotel in Makati. They disliked the racket that reporters made in setting up mikes, tape recorders, and video-cams. That militarist’s right-hand man pointed a cocked assault rifle at the newsmen, and yelled, “You are part of the problem.” Whereupon, the crowd quieted down and the militarist began his megalomaniac spiel. Days later, his unexplained ownership of a dozen for-hire vehicles was exposed in the press, and the exposers received death threats.
Binay’s two other senator-accusers would do well to steer clear of their militaristic colleague. Lawyers both, they know the basic principle of criminal justice: the accuser has the duty to prove his rap. Otherwise they risk tarnishing their fathers’ image: one in avoiding link to Marcos’s Martial Law, the other in going to political prison fighting it.
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Edward, an overseas Filipino worker whose real name I shall keep, reacts to my piece on the social cost of separated families and broken homes (Gotcha, 6 Oct. 2014):
“I’ve been following your column since becoming an OFW, albeit as TNT (tago nang tago), 15 years ago. Working abroad for the children’s sake comes at a price – as you said, marital breakups, physical-emotional distress, and missing special family events including burials. There’s also a prize, at least in my case as a factory worker here. My sacrifices have produced an Australian immigrant (my eldest), a government lawyer, a military pilot, and a registered nurse. The last, having gone on to medical school, is the main reason I still need to work here. The sad part of working abroad is, per your exposés, how officials enrich themselves in government – at the expense of our blood, sweat, and tears. Is there hope for the motherland?”
Now there’s a true star, unlike those officials who call OFWs “modern-day heroes,” yet strive not to improve domestic employment.
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