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THE GUYS down here in my barangay have just about given up on the DOJ’s filing of the “third batch” of PDAF cases when the NBI a few days ago filed rather insignificant cases with the Ombudsman against eight former and current lawmakers.
The cases involved the PDAF, the congressional “pork” that was supposedly diverted to fake NGOs of Janet Lim Napoles.
In other words, the lawmakers merely pocketed the funds.
According to the Ombudsman, the charges were malversation, falsification of public documents, and violation of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
Those were not “plunder” cases which, by definition, should involve at least P50 million.
The Napoles PDAF scandal reportedly involved at least P10 billion and that was just Napoles’ fake NGOs.
But another pork-style invention of the Aquino (Part II) administration, the one called DAP, was said to have involved at least P140 billion, distributed by the hundreds of millions to members of the Senate.
Then we had this NBI, courtesy of the DOJ, talking about street crimes like falsification and technical malversation, and graft and corruption?
Among the current lawmakers, as it turned out, was Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, a former law school dean in a Catholic university who authored various legal books and served as close-in legal adviser to past presidents of the republic.
No, this guy was not patsy!
Rodriguez still chairs the House committee that tackled the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law, one of the priority bills of the Aquino (Part II) administration that could hardly gain support in both chambers of Congress.
He was supposed to push for the BBL for and in behalf of our leader Benigno Simeon, aka BS. The House turned sour on the bill. From what I heard, some factions in the Palace tried to pin the blame on the committee headed by Rodriguez.
It seemed that the case against Rodriguez involved P2 million, an insignificant amount alongside the billions of pesos that the media connected with the scandal over the PDAF (P10 billion) and the DAP (P140 billion).
By the way, the calculator will show an “error” when you compute the percentage of P2 million to the hundreds of billions of pesos in PDAF and DAP.
The DOJ invited vicious media attacks when, some months ago, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said the DOJ did not have the time, perhaps even the inclination, to pursue the “third batch” of legislators in the PDAF cases.
From what I gathered, during those times of constant media badgering of De Lima on the “third batch,” Rodriguez wrote to De Lima to explain his predicament—why he was wrongly included in the supposed PDAF offenders.
Unfortunately, Rodriguez did not hear even just a whimper from the DOJ.
About eight years ago in 2007, as it turned out, the DBM released some P3.5 million in PDAF to some government agencies that eventually went to the bogus Napoles NGOs, with the supporting documents apparently bearing the signature of Rodriguez.
In September last year, or seven years later, at the height of the PDAF scandal over the Napoles NGOs, the COA all of a sudden discovered 18 documents that tended to link a P3.5-million fund release, care of Rodriguez, with those NGOs.
Those documents apparently became the basis for the case filed by the NBI with the Ombudsman against Rodriguez.
As it turned out, 2007 was an election year, and for the first time in his life, Rodriguez ran for public office to be the Cagayan de Oro congressman.
Thus, based on the “third batch” case against him, he was actually impudent, and thus crazy enough, to steal some P2 million in the PDAF release, when he was only a congressman for only three months.
To think, at that time, being closely associated with the ousted President, the man named Band…Wrist Band, the neophyte congressman was what we would term, politically speaking, as “out.”
So his reaction to the COA findings in September 2014 (or seven years later) was immediate. He went right away to the NBI with those 18 documents, asked the bureau to authenticate his “supposed” signatures, and provided the NBI with 25 other documents bearing his “real” signature.
The NBI had a unit called Questioned Documents Laboratory Division, or QDD, that specialized in detecting forgeries.
The unit did not take long to come out with its finding: The supposed signatures of Rodriguez in the COA documents were forgeries. Rodriguez got the results in October 2014.
He wasted no time to turn over the NBI findings to the COA as part of his appeal but the COA has yet to respond to it up to this day.
Based on media reports, the DOJ list of the so-called third batch contained 29 names of former and current lawmakers, including high profile senators.
Only one senator made it to the Ombudsman cases filed by NBI a few days ago, together with seven former and current congressmen.
Thus the filing of the third batch of cases did not seem credible to many sectors, including the militant groups in the legislature.
Rodriguez said he was going to file a petition in the Supreme Court to stop the proceedings in the Ombudsman and to return the complaint to the DOJ.
In effect, in the DOJ investigation, Rodriguez would be banking on the NBI findings that his supposed signatures in the COA documents were forgeries.
Still, the NBI insisted to file the nine cases on the “third batch” that had 29 lawmakers, “because the scientific findings of the NBI regarding the forged signatures were not conclusive.”
Who would decide then on the authenticity of those signatures? Well, it would be up to the Sandiganbayan, according to the NBI.
Really, the Sandiganbayan would have the scientific and technical expertise to authenticate the signatures? Wow.
Finally, according to the NBI, even if the Sandiganbayan would determine that the signatures were forgeries, those eight lawmakers still committed the crime of “negligence.”
Question: how do you prove negligence?
There—those eight were merely “negligent,” while others in the third batch of 29 lawmakers were said to have stolen public funds involving hundreds of millions of pesos, and they would just go scot free—is that it?
