THE Sandiganbayan First Division has convicted former Technology and Livelihood Resource Center (TLRC) deputy director general Dennis Cunanan, supervisor Belina Concepcion, and chief accountant Marivic Jover on charges of graft and malversation of public funds.
All three were sentenced to six to ten years imprisonment for graft and 10 to 18 years and nine months for malversation with perpetual disqualification from holding public office.
The court likewise ordered them to jointly pay the Republic of the Philippines the sum of P4.8 million as indemnity, subject to legal interest of six percent per year until paid in full.
However, the cases against former TLRC director general Antonio Ortiz and private defendant Joel Soriano were ordered archived since both have evaded the court’s jurisdiction and remain at large.
Associate Justice Efren N. de la Cruz, First Division chairperson, penned the 72-page decision promulgated last October 9. Associate Justices Geraldine Faith A. Econg and Arthur O. Malabaguio concurred.
Based on the information filed by the Office of the Ombudsman in 2021, the defendants were accused of mishandling P4.8 million in public funds drawn from the Priority Assistance Development Fund (PDAF) or “pork barrel” allocations of former Palawan Rep. Antonio Chaves Alvarez in 2007.
Prosecutors said the convicted TLRC officials unilaterally accepted the non-government organization Kalinga sa Kapwa and Kalikasan Foundation Inc. (KKLFI) as a project partner to implement livelihood projects funded by the lawmaker’s PDAF without verifying its accreditation or conducting public bidding.
They said there was also no monitoring of project implementation and no liquidation of released public funds.
In convicting the TLRC executives, the anti-graft court held that they acted with “manifest partiality, evident bad faith or gross inexcusable negligence” when they disregarded rules and regulations on the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), the Commission on Audit (COA), and the Government Procurement Policy Board (GPPB) covering disbursement of public funds.
“Such negligence was characterized by the want of even slight care, acting or omitting to act in a situation where there is a duty to act, not inadvertently but willfully and intentionally with a conscious indifference to consequences in so far as other persons may be affected,” the Sandiganbayan said.
Had the accused not ignored the red flags, the court said the transactions would not have pushed through.
It noted that the KKKFI submitted a certificate of registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showing that it was incorporated less than a year before it entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the TLRC.
At the same time, the foundation’s address was located in Valle Verde, Pasig City but the projects it was supposed to implement were in Palawan, a contravention of the COA requirement that an NGO partner must be locally located.
The court also questioned the release of the entire P4.8 million to KKKFI when COA Circular No. 96-003 provided guidelines that it should have been done in three tranches: 15 percent upon signing of the MOA, 35 percent at the start of the project, and the 50 percent balance upon completion but subject to inspection and acceptance of the government office.
