THE trial of two former officials of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) and a British businessman involved in the allegedly anomalous P2-billion vessel monitoring system (VMS) project in 2018 will proceed.
This after the Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 141 in Cainta, Rizal denied motions to quash the graft charges against former BFAR national directors Eduardo B. Gongona and Demosthenes R. Escoto, and UK-based SRT Marine Systems CEO Simon Tucker.
In a six-page resolution dated February 7, 2025, Presiding Judge Don Ace Mariano Alagar of the Cainta RTC ruled that the graft charges—two counts under Section 3(e) and one count each under Sections 3(g) and 3(j) of Republic Act 3019 (Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act)—must proceed to trial after finding no legal basis for dismissal.
The court ruled that the Office of the Ombudsman, which filed the cases, did not commit inordinate delay in its investigation and rejected the two former BFAR chiefs’ claim that their right to a speedy disposition of cases was violated.
With Gongona and Escoto’s motions denied, their arraignment and pre-trial are set for February 26, allowing the prosecution to present evidence on the alleged irregular awarding of the VMS contract.
Gongona and Escoto sought to quash the charges, arguing that the Ombudsman took nearly three years to file the case—beyond the two-year limit for complex cases set under OMB Administrative Order (AO) No. 1 of 2020.
But the court ruled that “no inordinate delay in the conduct of the preliminary investigation can be ascribed to the OMB.”
“As the case was complex and involved voluminous records, the OMB completed the preliminary investigation, including resolutions on the motions for reconsideration, within 24 months as provided in OMB AO No. 1 of 2020,” the resolution stated.
“Suffice it to say, there is no violation of accused movants’ right to speedy disposition of their cases,” it added.
The court also found no indication that the complaint was politically motivated or maliciously prosecuted.
“There is no allegation in the pleadings of accused-movants before the OMB and their motions to quash that the prosecution of this case was politically motivated or prosecuted for malice or both,” the ruling stated.
The cases stemmed from allegations that Gongona, Escoto, and Tucker conspired in 2018 to award a P2.09-billion VMS contract to SRT-UK, despite the company’s prior disqualification from a French-funded bidding process.
The original project, backed by a P1.6-billion French government loan, required bidders to be French or in a joint venture with a French firm.
But the French Ministry of Finance later disqualified SRT-France, a subsidiary of SRT-UK, citing British ownership and the lack of operational facilities in France.
Rather than rebidding the project, Philippine officials restructured the deal, secured local funding, and expanded the contract to P2.09 billion, prosecutors said.
The revised contract compelled the government to procure 5,000 vessel tracking devices, up from the originally planned 3,736 units, increasing costs and government obligations.
