THE Justice Department has been asked to prosecute an official of the Duterte administration for plunder and graft charges for a P234-million anomaly at the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. during the previous administration.
The Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption sought the inclusion of Transportation Undersecretary Raoul Creencia as a respondent in its amended complaint against former Pagcor chairman Cristino Naguiat and 10 others in connection with an allegedly anomalous lease agreement with a private company.
Creencia was implicated because he was chief government corporate counsel during the previous administration.
The anti-graft watchdog also added another former official, Pagcor’s technical working group chairman Jose Christopher Manalo IV, in its amended complaint.
Like Naguiat and other respondents, Creencia and Manalo should be held criminally liable for plunder, graft and violations of the Government Procurement Act, VACC founding chairman Dante Jimenez said.
The other respondents in the case are former Pagcor president and chief operating officer Jorge Sarmiento; former board members Jose Tanjuatco, Enriguito Nuguid and Eugene Manalastas, bids and awards committee members Milagros Pauline Visque, Ramon Jose Jones, Romeo Cruz Jr., Annalyn Zoglmann and Kathleen Delantar, and Vanderwood Management Corp. president Manuel Sy.
The case stemmed from the disbursement of P234 million in public funds as payment to VMC for the lease of a property in Manila that would be used for a casino.
The complaint originally filed by VACC last October 24 alleged that the P234 million represented payments for the first 18 months of the 15-year lease contract, which had a total amount of P3.2 billion.
Despite declaring the September 2014 bidding a failure since only one bid was submitted, the BAC on December 10 allegedly granted VMC’s motion for reconsideration and awarded the contract to the company.
The Commission on Audit found the lease contract irregular and anomalous, as the property was owned by the city government of Manila and not by VMC.
The property, located along Roxas Boulevard, has reportedly been leased by the city government to Oceanville Hotel and Spa Corp. since January 2014.
Jimenez asked the Justice Department to immediately act on their complaint and conduct a preliminary investigation.
“We urge the DoJ to now create a panel of prosecutors to study if there is probable cause for plunder. We believe that the DoJ under this administration will not sleep on this case–unlike what the Ombudsman did in the many cases we filed there,” he said as a way to explain why they opted to file the complaint with the Justice Department and not the Ombudsman.