OMBUDSMAN Conchita Carpio Morales has indicted for the month of September three former Mindanao lawmakers for funneling their Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) to various "ghost" projects.
Based on a press release issued by the agency, Morales has ordered indictment of former Davao del Sur representative Marc Douglas Cagas IV, former Bukidnon representative Candido Pancrudo Jr. and former Misamis Occidental Representative Marina Clarete, as they were separately charged with several counts of violation of Section 3(e) of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (Republic Act 3019), Malversation through Falsification of Public Documents.
Cagas was also indicted for using his P6-million PDAF to fund "ghost" projects in 2008 despite his claim that the funds were used for business clinics, market development and technology transfer through livelihood trainings and seminars, on-site field verification.
However, it was exposed that the training kits never reached the intended beneficiaries as there was no actual project implementation or delivery of goods.
The same news release stated that Pancrudo was also found to have used his 2007 PDAF to "ghost" projects amounting to P49.2 million intended to fund the training and livelihood seminars for his constituents.
As stated in the news release, based on the report of the COA, "there is no evidence that the funds were used to finance training and livelihood seminars conducted, or to the purchase the training kits."
The Ombudsman also found that the alleged recipients denied receiving livelihood training kits.
Other violations that were observably committed by Pancrudo were lack of public bidding in the NGO-selection process, absence of liquidation of public funds, and unusual accommodation in the examination, processing and the approval of PDAF releases to the NGOs all completed in one day.
Also found to have used her PDAF amounting to PP65 million for ghost projects was Clarete, who claimed that she used the funds for the distribution of livelihood technology kits and trainings: trainings; water pumps; hand tractors; calamansi, rambutan and mango seedlings.
The onsite field validation of the Ombudsman, however, revealed that the recipients enumerated in the list of purported beneficiaries denied having received any of the items.
Not one of the mayors or municipal agriculturalists in the first district of Misamis Occidental was aware of the projects.
According to Ombudsman Morales, "based on the evidence presented, the widespread misuse of the PDAF allocated to Clarete was coursed through a complex scheme basically involving projects supposedly funded by the PDAF but which turned out to be inexistent or ghost."