Disgraced contractor couple Pacifico ‘Curlee’ and Cezarah ‘Sarah’ Discaya did a ‘tell-all plus plus’ when they appeared before the Independent Commission on Infrastructure (ICI) yesterday.
Cornelio Samaniego III, the couple’s legal counsel, said the Discayas were fully cooperative and bared everything they know to the ICI.
‘They are not hiding anything anymore,’ he said.
Samaniego said his clients divulged everything – from the persons involved up to the history of transactions they had undertaken.
‘We are telling everything,’ he stressed.
Pressed on the revelations made by his clients before the commission, Samaniego said that most were already included in the affidavit they had filed before the Senate and Congress, yet there were also new names bared by his clients to the commission.
‘We’ll submit a supplemental affidavit, so we will add new names. In due time, it will come out,’ Samaniego said. ‘For now, no comment.’
Samaniego said his clients were scheduled to come back to the ICI to finish giving their statement.
‘It went OK. The members of the ICI were very cordial,’ Samaniego said.
He added that unlike former DPWH Bulacan district engineer Brice Hernandez, the Discayas are not inclined to return any of their luxury cars to the government as a goodwill gesture.
‘We are not returning anything at the moment, because the accounts were frozen,’ Samaniego said.
AMLC, BIR tie-up
Meanwhile, the ICI has forged a cooperation and information-sharing pact with the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) that will facilitate the freezing of assets of personalities implicated in the numerous ghost and substandard flood control projects at the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).
ICI executive director Brian Keith Hosaka said the agreement, which also includes the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), will speed up investigation of the anomalous flood control projects, the filing of the relevant criminal cases as well as the recovery of the proceeds.
‘We will have information-sharing, coordination and cooperation which is crucial for the verification of information divulged to us by their ‘resource persons’,’ Hosaka told reporters.
Several senators, congressmen, contractors and former and current DPWH officials and officers have appeared before the ICI to provide information regarding multibillion-peso ghost and substandard flood control projects implemented by the DPWH.
Hosaka said the partnership with BIR will be helpful in determining tax liabilities, while the AMLC will facilitate the freezing of assets of individuals involved in the flood control mess.
According to BIR commissioner Romeo Lumagui, Jr., they aim to build strong cases for tax evasion.
‘We already have preliminary draft of (tax) assessments. But they still lack a number of information. We don’t want to file haphazard criminal complaint(s) with the Department of Justice. That’s why we want to get all the useful information,’ he said.
Closed hearing up to ICI – Palace
Malacañang will not intervene with the decision of the ICI against livestreaming its hearings on anomalous flood control projects, stressing that President Marcos respects the body’s independence.
‘The President has already said that this ICI is an independent commission. So, whatever their policies and procedures are, the President will respect them and he will not interfere because they are an independent body or commission,’ Presidential Communications Undersecretary Claire Castro told reporters.
ICI’s Hosaka earlier defended the decision to keep the hearings closed, saying it is necessary to ‘avoid a trial by publicity.’
‘We don’t want the commission to be used for any political agenda or leverage that’s why we are careful,’ Hosaka said.
He said the ICI’s investigation is a ‘process’ that cannot be defined by piecemeal revelations.
‘People might be misled,’ he noted. ‘We would like to prevent that because we want the people to trust the system and in the independent commission that we will be doing our jobs fairly, objectively and independently.’
Meanwhile, Castro also defended the appointment of former Philippine National Police chief Rodolfo Azurin Jr. as special adviser and investigator to the ICI.
Castro said Azurin was chosen to replace Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong based on his capabilities and experience as an investigator.
There were some who questioned Azurin’s appointment as he was previously implicated in the alleged cover-up of the P6.7-billion shabu haul involving high-ranking PNP officers in 2022.
He was later cleared in the Senate committee on public order and dangerous drugs’ investigation into the massive controversy.
‘It’s clear he was never charged,’ Castro said.
‘What I want to stress here is that the independent nature of this commission. We will not interfere with their work. We will, of course, be in discussion with them. We will ask them what happened, what have you found, what are we doing next,’ Marcos said during a Sept. 15 press conference.
‘But we were not about to direct them as to how they were going to conduct their investigations, and we are going to leave it up to them,’ he said.
‘Let the people in’
For some lawmakers, keeping the ICI hearings away from the public invites doubt into what transpires behind closed doors.
‘There’s no real accountability without transparency. Let the people in. It is the right of the people who were robbed of billions of pesos to watch the proceedings of the ICI,’ Akbayan party-list Rep. Perci Cendaña said in a statement.
Cendaña said corruption existed because of the lack of transparency in the process of the bicameral conference committee, which reviewed and approved the national budget of the government up to its project implementation.
‘It is time to pass the Independent Commission for Infrastructure Bill or House Bill (HB) 4453 that will put in place the mandatory public hearings with livestreaming,’ Cendaña said.
For her part, ML party-list Rep. Leila de Lima said given the witnesses’ testimonies in the Senate Blue Ribbon committee hearings on flood control anomalies, it is ripe for Congress to pass HB 4453 into law.
‘As the plot thickens, it becomes even more urgent and imperative to pass House Bill No. 4453. To ferret out the truth and ensure accountability – whoever is involved – Congress must act swiftly and decisively,’ De Lima said in a separate statement.
‘This is the biggest corruption scandal in our history, and we cannot address it with partial solutions. The ICI cannot handle this widespread corruption using its limited powers. The DOJ (Department of Justice) and the ombudsman must hasten the filing of strong cases,’ De Lima said.