TWO executives of Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp., detained for months at the Pasay City jail for their refusal to fully cooperate with investigations of the Senate Blue Ribbon committee, were released yesterday.
Release orders for Mohit Dargani, the company’s treasurer/secretary, and Linconn Ong, director, were signed by Senate President Vicente Sotto III a day before Congress officially goes on a sine die adjournment.
Ong, Dargani, and Twinkle Dargani, the company president and sister of Mohit, were cited in contempt and ordered arrested by the Blue Ribbon panel for not fully cooperating with the committee investigations and not directly answering questions from senators.
Ong was the first to be arrested in September last year and was initially detained at the Senate building.
The Dargani siblings were arrested in November last year as they were trying to fly out of the country to Kuala Lumpur via a private plane at the Davao International Airport. They were also detained at the Senate building.
Twinkle was later freed on humanitarian reasons, while Mohit and Ong were later hauled to the Pasay City Jail.
The Blue Ribbon investigated the alleged misuse of some P42 billion funds of the Department of Health to the Department of Budget and Management, whose Procurement Service (PS) unit purchased alleged overpriced pandemic response items from Pharmally, under contracts worth at least P10 billion even if the company had a paid-up capital of P625,000.
In a draft report that was not signed by majority of the panel’s members, the committee recommended the filing of charges against the Pharmally executives, former officials of the PS-DBM led by Lloyd Christopher Lao, former presidential adviser Michael Yang, and health officials involved in the controversy.
The panel also recommended the filing of cases against President Duterte once he steps down from the presidency on June 30 for failing to go after those responsible for the Pharmally mess.
However, only nine of the 20 members of the Blue Ribbon Committee signed the draft report before Senate went on a sine die adjournment on Wednesday night, leaving the report not being able to reach the plenary for discussions.
Lawyer Ferdinand Topacio, who welcomed Dargani and Ong as they left their cells at the Pasay City Jail, threatened to sue Sen. Risa Hontiveros anew for allegedly coercing resource persons to testify against his clients during the Blue Ribbon hearings conducted from August last year to January this year.
Hontiveros denied the allegation, saying they have evidence to prove no one was coerced to testify against the Pharmally officials.
