THE Sandiganbayan sentenced former Oriental Mindoro Rep. Rodolfo Valencia, businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles, and former executives of the Technology Resource Center (TRC) to 18 to 30 years imprisonment after convicting them on three counts of violation of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (RA 3019).
The 173-page decision, penned by Associate Justice Ma. Theresa Dolores C. Gomez-Estoesta with concurrences from Associate Justices Zaldy V. Trespeses and Georgina D. Hidalgo, however, acquitted all the accused of three counts of malversation of public funds that stemmed from the same transactions involving Valencia’s Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel allocations in 2008 and 2009.
From the TRC, sentenced to six to ten years for each count of graft were former deputy director general Dennis Cunanan and Technology and Information Dissemination Group manager Maria Rosalinda Lacsamana.
However, only Napoles was found civilly liable for the fraudulent disbursements and ordered to indemnify the government by paying P1.8 million to the National Treasury in the first graft case, P1.8 million in the second case, and P2.91 million in the third or a total of P6.51 million “representing the total amount wrongfully and illegally disbursed.”
The cases that the Office of the Ombudsman filed in 2016 alleged that the defendant government officials allowed Napoles’ private foundation Masaganang Ani Para sa Magsasaka Foundation, Inc. (Mamfi), to take away P6.51 million in taxpayers’ money.
Documentary exhibits that prosecutors presented during the trial showed Valencia personally handpicked Mamfi to be the lead implementor of his PDAF-funded livelihood projects.
The court said that based on the evidence, Mamfi was a bogus non-government organization (NGO) and the government money was released to it for livelihood projects that were non-existent.
“It was accused Valencia who signed the approval of liquidation documents purporting to show that the agri-kits were allegedly distributed to the beneficiaries, when in truth no such distribution occurred. This was enough to pin culpability on accused Valencia,” the Sandiganbayan said.
While the former lawmaker claimed that his signature was forged on some of the documents submitted, the court noted that he did not raise the same challenge on other documents pertaining to his selection of Mamfi to implement his PDAF projects.
On the other hand, the TRC executives were held liable for allowing the downloading of public funds to a bogus NGO without doing the necessary checking of its legitimacy or verifying if the projects were in fact implemented.
“Accused Lacsamana certified in the DVs that the expenses were necessary and lawful when in fact Mamfi had no physical existence and that no validation was made as to the circumstances of said NGO, including the projects that were supposedly implemented. Simply, accused Lacsamana routinely recommended the release of funds to a bogus NGO for a sham project,” the court said.
