ENERGY Regulatory Commission chairman Jose Vicente Salazar on Monday was tagged as the culprit behind the suicide of lawyer Francisco Villa Jr.
Villa had led the bids and awards committee at the ERC, and Salazar is accused of pushing Villa to sign illegal documents and rig P20 million worth of contracts to favor Salazar’s supplier and contractor.
During the probe conducted by the House committee on good government led by Surigao del Sur Rep. Johnny Pimentel, ERC executives testified that it was Salazar who went out of his way to make his favored contractor Prime Arts and supplier Fat Free win the bidding.
These companies were owned by Salazar’s high school buddy Luis Morellos.
It was also Morellos that renovated Salazar’s office and the boardroom without the benefit of a public bidding.
A public bidding was done post-haste but Villa refused to sign the bid documents because the bidding was done months after the renovations had been finished, according to BAC member Cherry Lynn Gonzales.
Gonzales said the boardroom renovation was completed in the first quarter of 2016 but the bidding was held months after the completion or in October that same year.
Salazar denied he made the request to renovate his boardroom and that he was not aware a renovation was being done.
“You’re lying. The boardroom is sitting right next to your office, the Office of the Chairman. How can you not know?” Pimentel said.
Salazar’s chief of staff and head executive assistant, Steve Riva, said he got a “verbal” go signal from Villa when he asked if it was all right to go ahead with the renovation.
Salazar admitted Riva was his first-degree cousin.
Rep. Bernadette Herrera-Dy, author of House Resolution 565 that sought the House probe, said she could not believe Riva allowed a contractor to do the renovation without proper documents to show that the contractor was awarded the contract to do so.
Salazar tried to pin all the blame on Villa, which made the lawmakers cry foul because Villa could no longer defend himself.
But Salazar started making admissions about three anomalous contracts when journalist Charie Villa talked about her discussion with her brother hours before he killed himself.
“I noticed my brother was losing a lot of weight and over breakfast, the day before he died, I asked him what was wrong,” Charie recounted.
“He told me about the rigged contracts at ERC. He said he did not want to go to work anymore because, in his own words, ‘Chairman Salazar is forcing me to sign illegal documents.’ As he was holding his chest, he said hindi na raw niya kaya. I told him to quit his job.”
Villa, who was also ERC director for Planning and Information Service, committed suicide on Nov. 9, leaving behind three letters indicating he was under extreme pressure from Salazar to endorse rigged contracts at the energy watchdog.
Pimentel said his panel had so far uncovered at least three irregularities in Salazar’s office that involved the performance of crooked contracts even before the competitive bidding process.
“We are focusing our inquiry into the Office of the Chairman, where the fraud seems to be concentrated,” Pimentel said.
Based on initial evidence gathered by the committee, Salazar ordered the renovation of his conference room without a public bidding and simply demanded that he be reimbursed by the ERC.
Salazar admitted also shelling out some P30,000 for the boardroom tables and another P30,000 for the chairs.
Salazar, an appointee of President Benigno Aquino III, on his own also obtained new pest control services for the ERC without bidding, and despite the fact that the commission already had an ongoing service provider.
The third anomaly involved the hiring of advertising agent Morellos as ERC consultant for an audiovisual production meant for a promotional campaign featuring Salazar, who has apparently been nursing political plans.
“It would appear that the Office of the Chairman simply executed contracts, and the late Director Villa, in his capacity as head of the bids and awards panel, was just told to fix up the biddings that would validate the deals after the fact,” Pimentel said.
“As we’ve said, the committee is duty-bound to get to the bottom of these anomalies. We cannot just sweep Mr. Villa’s suicide under the rug.”
Villa, 54 and single, shot himself in the head with his.38-caliber revolver inside his house in Parañaque City. He was the son of the late Ombudsman Francisco Villa Sr.
When President Rodrigo Duterte first got wind of the corruption at the ERC, he angrily demanded the resignation of the entire commission composed of Salazar and Commissioners Alfredo Non, Gloria Victoria Yap-Taruc, Josefina Patricia-Asirit and Geronimo Sta. Ana, all appointees of the previous administration.