IRA SCAM DWARFS PDAF MESS July 18, 2013 9:47 pm by Llanesca T. Panti, Jefferson Antiporda, Catherine S. Valente Reporters and Joel M. Sy Egco Assignments Editor A former congressman on Thursday said the P10-billion anomaly involving unauthorized releases of pork barrel funds is “peanuts” compared to anomalies involving the internal revenue allotments (IRA) of various local government units (LGU) nationwide. Rodolfo Antonino, who was Nueva Ecija representative, estimated that similar rackets involving the IRA could run into billions of pesos each year. In his district alone, the Commission on Audit (COA) had identified at least two municipalities where millions of public funds were released without proper documentation. “PDAF [priority development assistance funds] only involves lawmakers and a few other officials in the Executive and the Judiciary who may have their own pork barrel funds. Even the President [Benigno Aquino 3rd] has his own [intelligence and social] funds. But the anomalies involving IRA would make the PDAF scam seem like peanuts,” Antonino told The Manila Times in an interview. Antonino and his successor, daughter Magnolia Antonino-Nadres, faced the media and revealed that at least P95 million worth of PDAF from four senators, including former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, had been given to three non-government organizations which are apparently bogus. Antonino said his daughter will file a resolution seeking an inquiry into “how IRA funds are used, implemented and released by mayors and other local government executives.” He said the IRA “is a form of pork barrel in a much larger form. The amount of money lost to the PDAF scam may just be a pittance because IRA is allocated everywhere,” the former congressman said. P20B to P30B By his own estimates, Antonino said 10 percent of the IRA may have been lost to corruption over the years. If his estimates are right, the amount could be equivalent to about P20 billion to P30 billion annually at any given time. For 2013 alone, the IRA grew 37.5 percent to P302.3 billion, boosted by higher revenue collections in 2010, based on a report by the Department of Budget and Management. The IRA is based on revenue collections in the three years before the current fiscal year, according to Section 284 of the Local Government Code (LGC), which mandates that LGUs should have a share from the collections. The 2013 IRA was to be distributed to 81 provinces, 143 cities, 1,479 municipalities, and 41,889 barangays, including the newly created cities of Ilagan in Isabela, Mabalacat in Pampanga, and Cabuyao in Laguna. According to Antonino, the municipality of San Leonardo alone spent P50 million for various deals without authorization between 2007 and 2011 during the incumbency of former Mayor Froilan Nagaño. “Based on the audit reports, all the auditors got were checks paid to several firms and even individuals, nothing more,” he said. On the other hand, in the town of San Antonio, Mayor Arvin Salonga also authorized the release of millions of pesos for anti-dengue granules from a private trading firm “without quotation, Bureau of Internal Revenue receipts and resolution to award, among others.” “This could be happening everywhere. Congress must investigate,” Antonino said, adding that they will ask COA for all similar audit reports so that they can come up with a definitive cost. Not just JLN Antonino said that not only JLN Group of Companies, the firm owned by Janet Lim-Napoles that allegedly used fake NGOs to siphon PDAF. He said there was one NGO in his province that was given congressional funds for a dubious project. This NGO is not connected with JLN. He identified the NGO as the Kaupdanan Mangunguna Foundation Inc. Citing a COA report dated December 2012, the Antoninos revealed that P70 million worth of PDAF was released to NGOs Countrywide Agri and Rural Development Foundation and Ginintuang Alay Magsasaka Foundation, while Kaupdanan Mangunguna was given P20 million even if all these entities were not authorized to receive such funds. The NGOs, it was learned, did not have supporting documents on how they will spend the money such as obligation requests, quotations, and resolutions to award. Moreover, the funding remains unliquidated as of this day. The NGO recipients, the Antoninos said, was chosen by San Antonio Mayor Salonga. While the COA report named Enrile as one of the donors, it did not identify the three other senators whose PDAF was distributed to the NGOs. “The report only said ‘from different senatiors’,” Antonino said. On top of the P90 million, another P5 million worth of PDAF from Enrile was also handed to Ginintuang Alay Magsasaka Foundation in San Leonardo, where Nagaño was mayor. “If the objective of the President is to clean up the processes in disbursement of funds, then we need to take this very seriously,” the older Antonino said in a press conference. “Part of our job as a representative is to make sure that local government units are held accountable. These LGUs should be investigated upon,” Congresswoman Nadres added. Not eligible Meanwhile, Western Samar Rep. Mel Senen Sarmiento, a top official of the Liberal Party (LP), has dismissed politics as the motive behind some lawmakers’ involvement in the P10-billion pork scam because non-state entities are not eligible for PDAF assistance. Sarmiento was reacting to the accusation of Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla, Jr. that the Aquino administration is behind the expose implicating Revilla as one of the 28 lawmakers who funneled his PDAF to JLN Corporation. “The attempts to drag the Aquino administration into the alleged P10-billion pork barrel scam are nothing but a smokescreen to make it appear that politics is behind the controversy. The practice of allocating the PDAF to non-government organizations and people’s organizations have stopped since 2011. They were removed from the menu of projects which are eligible for PDAF support,” Sarmiento, the LP secretary general, pointed out. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is already looking into the alleged scam. Each member of the House of Representatives is entitled to P70 million PDAF every year, while a senator receives P200 million annually. At the Senate, Sen. Franklin Drilon said Congress can easily do away with the PDAF even without passing a special law abolishing it provided that members of both chambers would agree to it. According to Drilon, there is no need for Congress to pass legislation to scrap the pork barrel system because it can be done just by deleting it from the proposed General Appropriations Act (GAA) of 2014. “GAA is a law and therefore both houses must agree. If you do not provide for PDAF in GAA, there will be no PDAF. As simple as that,” Drilon explained during the weekly Kapihan sa Senado news forum. Party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio filed House Bill 1535 or An Act Abolishing the “Pork Barrel” System following reports about the supposed misuse of PDAF allocation of some members of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 07:15:49 +0000
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