Category: Graft and corruption

‘Kamut balakubak’ moments at Senate hearing with the Tulfos

Published by Ellen on August 14, 2018

I don’t know what is more galling: the grossly anomalous contract between the Department of Tourism and PTV4 with the Tulfo Brothers’ Bitag Media Unlimited Inc. or the insolence of the Tulfo brothers. Especially Erwin Tulfo smirking when Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV was speaking.

Broadcaster Erwin Tulfo smirks as Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV was speaking. Screengrab from CNNPhilippines

At yesterday’s Senate hearing conducted by the Sen. Richard Gordon’s Blue Ribbon Committee, the multi-million transaction between the allegedly cash-strapped PTV and Ben Tulfo’s BMUI defies logic and common sense. It’s impunity of another kind.

The Filipino language has the perfect word for it: garapal.

Duterte’s latest bank account challenge

Published by Ellen on August 14, 2018

In his latest blast against his perceived enemies (“kayong mayaman”), President Duterte singled out ABS-CBN and mentioned a subject that continues to disturb him and causes him to commit one blunder after another in his desire to kill the issue.

That’s his undeclared wealth exposed by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV less than two weeks before the May 9, 2016 presidential elections that Duterte won.

Pres. Duterte admits that he released fake documents about foreign bank accounts of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV. Malacanang photo.

In his usual expletive-filled speech during the inauguration of the Northern Mindanao Wellness and Reintegration center in Malaybalay, Bukidnon last Aug. 3, Duterte said, “I’m, I am challenging ABS-CBN. Magpunta kami sa Central bank and I will ask the governor to open my account. Pindot lang ‘yan computer. I will not give it to a son of a b**** na kalaban ko. Why should I oblige you with… “

He was apparently referring to Trillanes who has challenged him to sign a waiver to open his BPI accounts which he said contained more that P2OO million during the years 2006 to 2014 which he did not declare in his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net worth when he was Davao City Mayor as required by the law of all government officials.

Malacañang’s dismissal of Carandang raises more questions

Published by Ellen on August 2, 2018

If truth is not on your side, suppress it.

That is what Malacañang is doing in the case of the undeclared wealth of President Duterte which was exposed by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV way back in April 2016, less than two weeks before the May 9 elections.

Last Monday, July 30, Malacañang released the order signed by Executive Secretary Salvador C. Medialdea dismissing Overall Deputy Ombudsman Melchor Arthur Carandang from service after Palace investigation found the latter “liable for graft and corruption and betrayal of public trust.”

Overall Deputy Ombudsman Melchor Arthur Carandang

Magdalo sees greater challenges with Arroyo back in power

Published by Ellen on July 30, 2018

15 years ago at the Oakwood Hotel in Makati.(AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

Related article:
https://ph.news.yahoo.com/blogs/the-inbox/magdalo-10-years-oakwood-224739924.html

When Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, Rep. Gary Alejano and some 100 officers and soldiers were preparing to mark the 15th year of the life-changing decision they made when they went out to denounce the corruption in the dubious presidency of Gloria Arroyo, little did they know that she would be installed as Speaker of the House, third in the line of succession to the presidency.

The irony was not lost on the officers and soldiers who spent seven years of their lives in detention for what they did on July 27, 2003.

“Critics of the Magdalo point to the fact that we once broke the military chain of command, and in the process found ourselves in the crosshairs of the State. We faced the consequences of the stand we made fifteen years ago, and we accepted the fate that the Arroyo regime imposed upon us”, said Ashley Acedillo, who was then a 26-year old first lieutenant in the Philippine Air Force.

GMA cases were most challenging: Ombudsman Carpio-Morales

Published by Ellen on July 27, 2018

Just retired Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales

By Ellen T. Tordesillas, VERA Files

In the seven years that Conchita Carpio-Morales was Ombudsman – investigating and prosecuting corruption cases against government officials – the ones that gave her the biggest headaches were those involving former president Gloria Arroyo, who was elected speaker of the House of Representatives last Monday.

In an interview by VERA Files days before she retired on July 26, Carpio-Morales described the cases involving Arroyo as “very, very complicated.”

Among those cases are the misuse of the intelligence funds of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office amounting to more than P300 million; the questionable transfer of P530,382,445 from the OWWA Medicare Fund to the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation; the P728 million Fertilizer Fund that was allegedly used in the 2004 elections; and the P16.4 billion ($329 million) NBN/ZTE deal.

GMA’s second ascent

Published by Ellen on July 24, 2018

Gloria Arroyo – in a red- orange dress taking control of the situation at the Batasan Session Hall last Monday- was a personification of what German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche said,“That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”

It is shuddering to imagine what a re-invigorated GMA can and will do.

She stayed in Malacañang for ten years with a dubious mandate. A vice president in 2001, she grabbed power from then President Joseph Estrada by installing herself to the presidency that was not declared vacant. She cheated, using the Commission on Elections and the military, in the 2004 elections.

In the unforgettable words of Susan Roces, the widow of her victim, Fernando Poe, Jr: “… you have stolen the presidency, not once, but twice.”

Good intention does not justify violating the law

Published by Ellen on June 21, 2018

Aquino announced the abolition of “pork barrel” but didn’t say anything about DAP in August 2013.

The indictment by the Ombudsman of former President Aquino over the controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program which has been declared by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional is a warning to those in power that good intentions do not justify shortcutting the law.

In the first place, no one has a monopoly of good intentions. Adolf Hitler’s concept of a Master race was seen by many Germans as a noble intention for his countrymen. If you listened to Imelda Marcos talk about her lavish projects, they are all in her desire to bring out the “good and the beautiful” in the Filipino. President Duterte justifies his bloody war on drugs as his love for the country.

As one of her last acts before retiring next month, Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales approved the resolution of the special panel granting the motion for reconsideration of complainants led by Isagani Zarate, Renato Reyes, Benjamin Valbuena, Mae Paner and others holding accountable Aquino for Usurpation of Legislative Powers under Article 239 of the Revised Penal Code (RPC) in connection with the DAP.

Ombudsman: Probe vs Duterte can be refiled

Published by Ellen on February 16, 2018

Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales. From Ombudsman’s FB page

Read carefully the reply of the Office of the Ombudsman to the announcement of Solicitor General Jose Calida Tuesday that the investigation on the plunder case filed by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV has been terminated.

The letter sliced through Calida’s mediocrity while assuring the public that Malacañang has not succeeded in quashing the issue of President Duterte’s undeclared wealth.

The plunder case has not been dismissed. This is important. What Overall Deputy Ombudsman Melchor Arthur Carandang said in his Feb. 12 letter to Calida was “the investigation on the complaint entitled ‘Antonio F. Trillanes IV v Rodrigo Roa Duterte’ and docketed as FF-M-16-0161 was already closed and terminated” upon recommendation by Deputy Ombudsman Cyril E. Ramos on 29 November 2017.”

“By rule, ‘[a] closed and terminated field investigation is without prejudice to the refiling of a complaint with new or additional evidence,’” the Ombudsman said.

Duterte’s ‘garbage’ continues to stink

Published by Ellen on February 6, 2018

Pres. Duterte, speaks at the 2017 Anti-Corruption Summit 2017. Malacañang photo by Ruji Abat.

When then presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte dismissed as “garbage” the exposé of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV during last two weeks of the election campaign about his bank deposits with the Bank of Philippine Islands, Julia Vargas branch, he thought probably that was the end of it.

Duterte was leading the surveys in the contest that he eventually won convincingly.

With the powers of the presidency, Duterte has been effective in crushing most of political his enemies. His devoted mob has been successful in spreading chaos in cyberspace.

But as one sage said, “Truth is always like oil in water; no matter how much of water you add, it always floats on top.”

If AMLAC didn’t send Ombudsman bank documents, what did Carandang leak?

Published by Ellen on January 31, 2018

There is something that defies common sense in the suspension by Malacanang of Overall Deputy Ombudsman Melchor Arthur Carandang for supposedly leaking to media confidential and alleged false information on President Rodrigo Duterte’s bank accounts September last year.

The “leak” was an interview of Carandang by reporters checking on the progress of the plunder case filed by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV with the Office of the Ombudsman in May 2016.

Trillanes attached a bunch of bank documents showing deposits of Pres. Duterte and daughter Sara Duterte-Carpio, Davao City mayor, in BPI and other banks in hundreds of millions, much, much more than the amount disclosed by the two in their Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Networth when they were Davao City mayor and vice mayor respectively.