Everyone I meet nowadays has been venting out angrily with extreme disgust at the incredibly massive kickbacks that contractors, DPWH officials, and legislators have been able to siphon from billion-peso flood control projects. Yet the common cynical refrain is: ‘Will something really come out of it?’
The furious public can’t wait for the usual way of litigating cases – it’s too long, tedious, complicated. Our people will no longer tolerate waiting for 20 years of investigations and court hearings, as was the case of Napoles and the PDAF scam. They want filing of cases that will stick. The sooner the better. As a respected social commentator puts it, ‘let’s not waste the anger.’
Delay is on the culprits’ side. They will exploit every legal loophole to run down the clock. They know people have short memories. Other issues will push aside the flood control scandal. They probably will wait for a more friendly administration to help them get off the hook.
The ball is in our hands to convict them one way or the other in the most expeditious way possible. Let’s be more creative and explore all options, including obscure and untried ones. Note, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Or to quote a Chinese proverb: ‘It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or yellow, as long as it catches mice.’
My humble suggestion is to take a page from history. Intrepid government agents and sleuths in charge of running after the Flood Control Gang might want to revisit a case that took place in Chicago, USA in 1927.
It’s called the ‘Al Capone Gambit,’ which can be summed up as ‘if you can’t get them for bigger crimes, let the taxman do the job.’ This strategy worked well on leading mob figures in the US.
In 1931, Alphonse ‘Al’ Capone, the notorious Chicago gang leader, perpetrated a number of extremely violent crimes but successfully evaded lawmen, most notably special agent Eliot Ness.
It took a determined, and incorruptible public servant to bring him down by thinking out of the legal box. A woman named Mabel Walker Willebrandt, known to be a dogged pursuer of bootleggers and mobsters. As Assistant Attorney General, she noticed that mobsters lived lavishly but never paid taxes.
Since she couldn’t charge Al Capone with high crimes like murder, arms smuggling or kidnapping, she charged him with tax evasion! That finally got the so-called ‘untouchable’ and ‘invincible’ chief mobster arrested. Never underestimate the wily brain of a woman.
The bestselling writer Bill Bryson depicts this story in his book ‘One Summer: America, 1927.’ He comments: ‘Prosecuting criminals for tax evasion is such a common ploy now that it is easy to overlook how brilliantly original-how stunningly out of left field -the idea was when she first came up with it. Many judicial authorities thought it was completely insane.’
Indeed, tax evasion of celebrities is a big thing in the US-and is usually a guaranteed slam dunk for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) when it comes to prosecuting.
Can’t we also unleash our tax bulldogs on our local gallery of suspected plunderers? I believe the Bureau of Customs is already doing that with the luxury vehicles of one of the big contractors. Let’s mobilize the BIR, AMLAC and COA to join the hunt. Why not form elite, eagle-eyed teams à la SWAT, composed of only the most untarnished and dedicated men and women in the law enforcement field.
Let them gather and sift through records of bank transactions, deposits and withdrawals, SALNs of named and still-to-be-named lawmakers, government executives, and contractors, and middle men/women. Swoop into their homes and hidden mansions, do surprise and comprehensive lifestyle checks on them.
Cast a net as wide as possible, to include international bank deposits. Give the elite investigating teams enough teeth to access foreign account details such as Swiss Banks and offshore banks-where I’m sure the big ones are hiding their absconded wealth.
Let’s do it one level at a time, initially national in scope, then later at the local level, and then down to the family level encompassing the lifestyles of ‘nepo babies.’
Just on SALNs, ITRs and list of properties alone, I bet the sharp eyes of seasoned tax sleuths and investigators will easily and surely spot irregularities and falsification of data in the documents in a matter of days or weeks.
Focusing initially on tax evasion will not only be a fast and sure thing, it will also play better on the media and will for the moment satisfy the outraged public’s thirst for ‘blood.’ As I keep hearing it from friends: ‘Kailangan may masampolan.’
Those who are involved in these scandals should be treated as Public Enemies and deserve nothing less than a metaphoric ‘summary execution’. Their greed has resulted in people’s deaths and destruction of properties due to floods that could have been prevented or controlled if only the allocated funds were spent to build the appropriate infrastructure.
If a contrived tax fraud conviction was the only way to bring a public enemy No. 1 like Al Capone to justice, then let’s also do it here and now-better a tax fraud conviction than nothing.
Most of all, let’s transform this anger into an unwavering zeal and energy to overhaul our democratic institutions and system of governance. Let it serve as a national wake up call to finally elect new good leaders that we can trust. Our country deserves a real break.