A former congressman, already in his 90s, has been charged by the Ombudsman for the alleged misuse of P10 million of his pork barrel on ghost projects.
The alleged offense happened 11 years ago.
Former Rep. Herminio Teves of Negros Oriental’s Third District and seven others were charged with graft and malversation of public funds in connection with the alleged diversion of P10 million of his Priority Development Assistance Fund allocation to Molugan Foundation Inc. in early 2007.
Teves allegedly endorsed, without public bidding, Molugan to be the partner nongovernment organization for his livelihood program.
It was implemented through the now-defunct Technology and Livelihood Resource Center, a government agency.
But Teves earlier claimed his signatures in the documents were forged.
Prosecutors also claimed Molugan was unaccredited and unqualified to implement the project.
Ombudsman investigators, on the other hand, charged officials of the defunct TLRC with processing the release of P9.6 million of Teves’ allocations to Molugan without having verified the organization’s qualifications and reviewed the supporting documents for the transaction.
In addition, the Ombudsman, through the charge sheet signed by Graft Investigation and Prosecution Officer Alteza Añoso, found out that the TLRC kept a P400,000 “service fee,” the expenditure of which was not properly liquidated by its employees who failed to submit a liquidation report.
Owing to the omissions allegedly committed by Teves and the TLRC officials at the time, Molugan president Samuel Bombeo Sr. was to “take possession and thus misappropriate PDAF-drawn public funds, instead of implementing the PDAF-funded project, which turned out to be nonexistent,” Añoso added.
Besides Teves and Bombeo, also charged were former’s chief-of-staff Hiram Diday Pulido, former TLRC officials—Director General Antonio Ortiz, Deputy Director General Dennis Cunanan, department manager Francisco Figura, chief accountant Marivic Jover and legislative liaison officer Belina Concepcion.
The prosecution recommended that bail be set at P70,000 for each of the accused.
The case was raffled off to the anti-graft court’s Third Division.