Calls for the removal of embattled Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) president and general manager Jose Arnulfo ‘Wick’ Veloso to step down from his post have already reached the table of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
But Malacañang on Monday said the President was still studying the allegations of Veloso’s gross mismanagement of the state-run pension fund of 2.6 million members and repeated violations of its policies before he could give his judgment.
‘What we know is that the President wants people who fulfill their responsibilities. He expects proper leadership and good governance in every agency,’ Palace press officer Undersecretary Claire Castro told reporters in a briefing.
‘The President does not make hasty decisions. If there are complaints, these must be carefully studied. And if there is sufficient basis, then we will see what the President’s decision will be,’ she added.
Not even a month after Veloso returned to his post after the Office of the Ombudsman ordered his preventive suspension, former and current officials of the GSIS called for his ‘immediate and irrevocable’ resignation accusing him of ‘poor investment decisions’ that resulted in losses amounting to P8.8 billion.
In a strongly worded letter addressed to Veloso dated Oct. 14, past and present members of the GSIS’s board of trustees alleged that the fund’s top executive had pursued risky investments ‘marked by a disturbing lack of transparency.’ They also raised red flags over the proposed P456-million Figaro Culinary Group investment, and the planned acquisition of The Centrum.
The letter was signed by four of the nine current members of the GSIS board of trustees – Ma. Merceditas Gutierrez, chair of the legal oversight committee; Emmanuel de Leon Samson, chair of the risk oversight committee; Rita Riddle, chair of the audit committee; board member Evelina Escudero.
Former GSIS board members Jocelyn de Guzman Cabreza and Alan Luga were also signatories.
They accused Veloso of ‘fabricating issues and weaponizing administrative procedures to retaliate against [board] members exercising their fiduciary duty of oversight.’