Category: Investigative Reports

TESDA: Pork, pricey seminars, dicey docs, favored contractors

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TWO PICTURES in stark contrast have been drawn about one agency: the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).

The first, a none-too-flattering one, by the Commission on Audit (COA), which speaks of “deficiencies” by the dozen in the agency’s implementation of its massive training and scholarship programs.

The second, glowing and pretty, by President Benigno S. Aquino III, who has heaped generous praise on TESDA on many occasions, citing it as an exemplar of performance in the executive branch, in terms of the volume of scholars that it has trained in recent years.

Among other things, COA says that there have been many “deficiencies” in TESDA’s scholarship programs funded with pork monies and awarded to private training institutes, including missed number of target beneficiaries, overpricing of supplies and training courses, contracts awarded without bidding, improper selection of beneficiaries, seminar attendance sheets of doubtful integrity, and the holding of different seminars on the same day and time for the same dubious beneficiaries, but at different locations.

Read: Part 5 of our series on “Pork a la Gloria, Pork a la PNoy”:

* TESDA’s billions: Goody story turns sorry with pork

COA’s 2013 annual agency report on TESDA said such deficiencies were particularly present in its implementation of two major programs that had been expanded using lumpsum monies that had been loaded up in TESDA’s budget that year: Training for Work Scholarship Program (TWSP) and Cash-for-Training Project (C4TP).

The report also revealed what the state auditors said was “non-compliance” in the implementation of TWSP by TESDA’s partner Technical Vocational Institutions (TVIs) or partner training entities from the private sector.

For 2012 and 2013, data from COA and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) showed that TESDA received a total of P427.09 million in PDAF from legislators, including 19 who gave their pork monies to projects implemented by at least 11 apparently favored TVIs.

TWSP had been funded under TESDA’s regular budget in previous years. In 2012, TWSP was expanded, while C4TP was started as “a program funded from DSWD (Department of Social Welfare and Development) designed to focus on the potential contributions of disadvantaged youth to nation building by engaging them in gainful employment by providing relevant, high quality and efficient technical education and skills development by TESDA.”

In 2012, TESDA received additional monies from the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) of legislators. It also got Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) funds that year, one sum being its own DAP allocation, and another representing a big portion of the DAP assigned to the DSWD.

But it was when TESDA had expanded too fast and its budget had grown too fat that COA found major discrepancies in project implementation. This was even as COA cited that TESDA had reported good to outstanding results on its “key performance indicators” – i.e., number of scholars trained, graduated, assessed, and employed, and number of seminars conducted – in 2013.

In the end, the picture that emerges is that while TESDA has been striving to surpass the targets of its regular programs, its more generously funded training tracks have gotten caught in a web of conflicting interests – politics, commerce, and corruption – involving some TVIs favored by a number of legislators, and favored further by some TESDA officers at the central, regional, and provincial offices.

It’s an image that TESDA Director General Emmanuel Joel Villanueva obviously doesn’t cherish. Speaking with PCIJ by phone recently, he said that his problem with COA is it does not update its prior year’s reports to reflect agency action on its findings in subsequent months.

“Ang ano ko lang sa COA, every time they come out with report, they do not lift a finger to update the report and say naayos na. Hindi raw nila policy ‘yun.. (My concern with COA is, every time they come out with a report, they do not a lift a finger to update the report and say that the problem has been addressed. They say it’s not their policy),” Villanueva said

He also said that despite COA’s adverse findings on TESDA in COA’s report for 2013, “since I took over, at no time has COA issued a notice of disallowance or notice of suspension on me or TESDA.” Villanueva became TESDA chief in July 2010.

COA found at least 11 TVIs non-compliant or with deficiencies in implementing TWSP: Asian Touch International Institute Inc.; Asian Spirit Career Foundation, Inc.; Meridian International College of Business, Arts and Technology; Phil-Best Entrepreneurs; Ilaw ng Bayan Foundation, Inc.; Informatics Computer Institute Valenzuela; I-Connect Solutions Tek Bok Inc.; Matuwid na Landas Foundation, Inc.; Serbisyong Pagmamahal Foundation, Inc.; Mechatronics Technologies, Inc.; and BSC Technological Institute, Inc.

PCIJ research on these TVIs reveals that two of them had already ceased operations in 2014, after cornering multimillion-peso contracts from TESDA. Two others have clear political connections, while at least two more also appear to have links with a Napoles-like network of dubious nongovernment organizations (NGOs). One TVI meanwhile was incorporated in the same year that it snagged multimillion-peso projects with TESDA. Three others are sister-firms that share the same set of directors and owners.

Altogether, according to COA and DBM reports, there were at least 19 legislators who enabled these TVIs to secure contracts with TESDA: Representatives Mar-Len Abigail Binay, Monique Yazmin Lagdameo, Ma. Rachel Arenas, Oscar G. Malapitan, Romero Federico S. Quimbo, William Irwin C. Tieng, Cinchona C. Cruz-Gonzales, Sigfrido R. Tinga, Sherwin N. Tugna, Antonio C. Alvarez, Victorino Dennis M. Socrates, Arnel M. Cerafica, Cesar V. Sarmiento, Tobias Reynald M. Tiangco, and Winston Castelo. – PCIJ, August 2015

TRC in zombieland still, 2 years after pork scam

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AT THE height of the media hoopla over the pork-barrel scam two years ago, Dennis Cunanan had a perennially furrowed brow that matched a grim countenance. But the Dennis Cunanan who sat down with PCIJ recently looked relaxed – which is not exactly what one would expect from someone facing multiple graft cases at the Sandiganbayan.

The cases stemmed from Cunanan’s stint at the Technology Resource Center (TRC), a government-owned and controlled corporation (GOCC) attached to the Department of Science and Technology (DoST).

In 2013, TRC had been among five state firms singled out for possible abolition by the Governance Commission for Government Owned and Controlled Corporations (GCG), in large part because of their role as implementing agencies of allegedly anomalous pork-barrel projects.

In the last quarter of 2013, President Benigno Aquino III, approved the abolition of Zamboanga del Norte College Rubber Estate Corporation (ZREC), the National Agribusiness Corporation (NABCOR), and the Philippine Forest Corporation (PFC). Left standing, however, are the National Livelihood Development Corporation (NLDC) and the firm once headed by Cunanan, TRC.

Yet while TRC lives, it does so in zombieland.

TRC, insiders told PCIJ, “is still open but on the way to closing shop.” A DOST Technical Working Group, they say, has set up “parameters on the manner of closing operations.”


Read, Part 4 of our report on “Pork a la Gloria, Pork a la PNoy’:

* TRC in zombieland still, two years after pork scam

Until February this year, however, TRC has continued to offer livelihood training seminars, for fees of P1,815 (decorating balloons) to P4,269 (commercial bread-making) per person, including one held in Gerona, Tarlac on how to bake muffins and cookies.

On its Facebook page that links out to the DOST website, TRC this year has also offered training seminars on jewelry appraisal and pawnshop operation; accounting and record-keeping for small businesses, setting up a hardware/construction supply store, travel agency, bakery, silkscreen printing, retail store, beauty parlor, and other small business operations; and making Chinese dimsum, herbal soap and detergents, trendy balloons, processed meat, and doing tilapia culture, among others.

As the DOST’s corporate arm, TRC supports research and technology by providing investments in innovations and rolling out or marketing the products of these studies. But state auditors say that somewhere along the way TRC became a conduit for the flow of pork monies to fake nongovernment organizations (NGOs).

The Commission on Audit’s (COA) Special Audit Report on the disbursement of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), or simply pork barrel, form 2007 to 2009 abounds with serious allegations against TRC.

According to COA, P2.44 billion worth of pork monies was transferred to TRC during the period, and that in turn, TRC transferred nearly the entire amount, P2.432 billion to bogus NGOs linked to Janet Lim-Napoles, the supposed pork barrel scam queen.

The projects, the COA report said, were endorsed by a total of 143 senators and congressmen, notably:

* Seven senators — Edgardo Angara, Jose ‘Jinggoy’ Estrada, Juan Ponce Enrile, Gregorio ‘Gringo’ Honasan, Lito Lapid, Ralph Recto, Ramon ‘Bong’ Revilla. Of the seven, Revilla allotted the biggest amount of PDAF to TRC: P127.5 million.

* 136 members of the House of Representatives, including then Surigao del Sur 1st District Rep. Philip Pichay, who allotted P209.4 million of his PDAF to TRC.
From 2007 to 2009, said the COA report, TRC transferred the P2.432-billion pork funds it received to 39 NGOs.

Of these NGOs, eight had been organized by Napoles.

In total, the Napoles-linked NGOs got P478.64 million from TRC.

But COA said that the biggest payout from TRC to a single NGO went to Aaron Foundation Philippines Inc.: P476.41 million. – PCIJ, August 2015

‘Twas not just about pork & Napoles

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FIGHTING corruption has been one of the top priorities of President Benigno S. Aquino III. Or so he claims. He bannered the slogan “kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” during the 2010 presidential campaign.

He promised to be the “most-determined fighter of corruption” in his Social Contract with the Filipino People, the Aquino administration’s platform until 2016.

He also made good governance a cornerstone in the current Philippine Development Plan, promising to curb corruption by intensifying government efforts at detection and prevention as well as resolving pending corruption cases with dispatch.

Read, Part 3 of our series on ‘Pork a la Gloria, Pork a la PNoy’:

* Lean harvest for ‘Daang Matuwid’- 24 solons in DOJ pork complaints, free pass for 94 more in COA list?

* What they told PCIJ

* What they told COA

Yet barely a year before Aquino’s term ends, the Aquino administration seems to be falling far, far behind in fulfilling such pledges. Indeed, one of the starkest examples of its weak response to corruption is its action – or lack thereof – on the controversial cases involving pork-barrel monies.

In fact, rather than being proactive in pursuing those involved in the pork-barrel scam that included government agencies, lawmakers, and bogus nongovernment organizations, the Aquino administration appears to have been springing into action only after dogged media coverage on the controversy.

And when it does act, those it hales into court are mostly small fry – career civil servants from the middle level down. Interestingly, too, most of the big-fish exceptions belong to the political opposition.

Speed, volume, focus, fairness – a campaign blind to political color or friendship – these seem to be in short supply when it comes to Aquino’s anti-corruption drive. Not surprisingly, it is hard to find enough reason to assert that the present administration has conducted a truly, fully vigorous war against corruption.

For instance:

* The PDAF scam story broke in the Philippine Daily Inquirer involving eight NGOs connected with businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles in July 2013, and the Commission on Audit (COA) released its special audit report on the abuse and misuse of pork from 2007 to 2009 in August 2013.

A month later, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed its first plunder and graft complaint against three opposition senators and five former legislators, and two months later, its second complaint against seven more former legislators.

But it was only on Aug. 7, 2015, or 24 months later, when DOJ filed its third complaint against a senator and eight other incumbent and former legislators. Curiously, all three complaints were founded on practically the same sets of documentary evidence and testimonies of whistleblowers.

* In its three complaints, the DOJ has named more than 100 respondents, including only 24 legislators mostly from the political opposition – four senators and 20 former and incumbent members of the House of Representatives. The Ombudsman has filed charges against three senators and five former congressmen in the Sandiganbayan, indicted a few more, but has yet to finish its case build-up against the rest of the lawmakers named in the three DOJ complaints.

The 24 legislators in the DOJ list make up just a fifth of the 118 legislators that COA said implemented “highly irregular” PDAF projects in tandem with questionable NGOs from 2007 to 2009.

This, in the five-year life of “Daang Matuwid” is by no measure an abundant harvest and, according to both critics and allies of the administration, an apparent case of “selective investigation” or “selective justice” on the part of the DOJ and the administration. To this day though, the Ombudsman’s Field Investigation Office continues to gather documentary and testimonial evidence against the other legislators named in the COA report.

• The COA report offered more than enough documentary and testimonial evidence on the modus operandi of legislators, implementing agencies, contractors, and NGOs, and how they corrupt the flow of public funds. Too, it proposed a menu of corrective measures and reforms that could have been instituted in agencies that have been used as pork funds conduits. The President had abolished pork barrel under the PDAF system, but in its stead allowed the continued flow of monies to bankroll projects endorsed by legislators, in the budgets of executive agencies.

• In a series, more COA annual audit reports followed for the years 2012 and 2013, this time on the same patterns of pork abuse and misuse under the Aquino administration. As with the first report, hardly word, comment, action, or promise of reform was heard from the President about what the government could do better to curb corruption.

To be sure, the problem is corruption is a problem bigger in scope and breadth than mere saber rattling against it could solve.

For one, Napoles is just one of the so-called “service providers” who have supposedly been colluding with lawmakers and officials of various state agencies to pocket funds meant for development projects. Lawyers, prosecutors, and civil servants in the agencies tainted with the corruption in pork say there are six to nine more Napoles-like “service providers.” Thus, the three batches of PDAF complaints that focused only on Napoles NGOs would hardly scratch the surface of this multi-billion-peso scam.

For another, PDAF was just one of the multiple lump-sum funds that have been raided, and continue to be raided, by Napoles and Napoles-like service providers and their fake NGOs. Audit reports documenting the abuse and misuse of these funds have not received appropriate action from the President or his Cabinet secretaries.

For a third, filing suit against a few big fish and a multitude of small fry may not at all trigger the right results and behavior among civil servants. Those in the lower ranks are bearing the heaviest punishment for corruption, even as their bosses and the politicians who authored the misdeeds have managed to fly out of the country, hide in opulent surroundings, and escape prosecution. – PCIJ, August 2015

Pork, parties, Binay, breaking bad

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AS THINGS stand, it looks like the ruling coalition led by the Liberal Party (LP) of President Benigno S. Aquino III has more members implicated in the pork-barrel scandal than parties belonging to the opposition.

Of the 114 legislators who were allegedly involved in anomalous pork projects in 2007 to 2009, 38 now belong to the administration coalition.

About 33 of the 114 belong to the opposition parties while the rest are either already dead or have unknown political affiliations.

But then again, there is Vice President Jejomar C. Binay, who had also cornered big slices of pork. For three years in a row, 2011, 2012, and 2013, Binay had received a hefty P200-million slice of pork annually.

He had vowed to spend it on his project lists: scholarship for indigent students, medical assistance for the poor, and the construction of 200 senior citizen centers in as many towns and cities of the country.

Whether he spent it well is a question that state auditors have raised. In its annual agency reports on the Office of the Vice President (OVP) for 2012 and 2013, the Commission on Audit (COA) found reason to conclude that Binay’s pork had turned bad.

Read Part 2 of PCIJ’s report, “Pork a la Gloria, Pork a la PNoy”:

* Solons in pork scam list: 38 LP, 33 UNA, 11 dead
* Binay’s pork: Breaking bad

To be sure, with each election in this country, the political landscape shifts, twists, and turns. As such, classifying the political leanings of the legislators who may or may not have benefited from pork-barrel projects is tricky.

Binay, who won as the opposition candidate for vice president, had wished for pork in a letter to President Benigno S. Aquino III in late 2010.

Because they were friends once before, Binay’s wish was granted, albeit in a manner that broke conventions. Aquino’s allies in Congress, including then Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile had lobbied to give BInay pork, while Senator Franklin Drilon, Liberal Party vice chairman and then Senate Committee on Finance chair, had endorsed it.

In Enrile’s mind, as the nation’s “No. 2 Man,” Binay “deserves to get his pork” because “he represents government… the sovereign people… the Republic of the Philippines next to the President.”

“In other words,” Enrile said, “we are not a monarchy system but he’s in effect in the position of a crown prince.”

But not everyone could be a “crown prince” like Binay. Many others thus decided to just jump ship to the LP camp, the political party in power after 2010.

Of the 114 names revealed in both the records of the whistleblowers and government agencies, only seven lawmakers had been originally allied with LP.

Many of the others had supported the Lakas political party of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Upon Aquino’s assumption to office in 2010, however, at least six of these pro-Arroyo lawmakers became LP converts.

More members of the Lakas-led administration coalition under Arroyo that later became the opposition under Aquino – 25 in all – shifted alliance in 2013. – PCIJ, August 2015

Pork a la Gloria, Pork a la PNoy: Kahindik-hindik, unconscionable

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TODAY we start running a series of PCIJ reports on the unyielding saga of pork and corruption, seemingly the eternal scourge of government and politics in the Philippines.

On Nov.19, 2013, the Supreme Court, voting 14-0 with one abstention, declared “the entire 2013 PDAF Article” and all legal provisions behind its prior incarnations – Countrywide Development Fund and Congressional Initiatives Allocation – to be unconstitutional.

It noted that the pork system “authorized lawmakers, individually or through committees, to intervene, assume or participate in any of the various post-enactment stages of the budget execution, such as project identification, modification and revision of project identification, fund release, and/or fund realignment.”

But from the reports of the Commission on Audit (COA) on agencies riddled with pork, and various people and paper sources, the story of the continuing abuse and misuse of pork and other lump-sum funds emerges.

It lingered on even during the first half of the “Daang Matuwid” administration of President Benigno S. Aquino III from 2011 to 2013.

And despite the high court’s temporary restraining order on pork disbursement from Sept.10, 2013, some agencies and legislators continued to dispense it, while many others have yet to return to the Treasury multimillion pesos of unutilized pork monies allotted in their 2012 and 2013 budgets.

“Kahindik-hindik” or horrible in English, was how then COA Chairperson Maria Gracia Pulido-Tan described the corruption in pork that her team of 18 COA Special Audits Office staff and a Technical Audit specialist uncovered when they scrutinized pork-barrel projects supposedly implemented from 2007 to 2009.

Fresh COA reports on the agencies that implemented pork projects during the first half of the Aquino administration do not present a pretty picture, either. In one, state auditors chose a searing description for what has been going on: “unconscionable” – or walang awa in Filipino.

COA’s Circular 2012-003 defines “unconscionable expenditures” as those that are “unreasonable and immoderate, and which no man in his right sense would make, nor a fair and honest man would accept as reasonable, and those incurred in violation of ethical and moral standards.”

For this series of reports, a seven-person team of PCIJ writers, content producers, and platform staff reviewed, sorted, and analyzed a volume of data from the agencies linked to the Napoles pork-barrel scam; the files of whistleblower Benhur Luy; the pleadings submitted to the Sandiganbayan; COA audit reports; the corporate records of some contractors behind pork-funded projects; and the political history of administration and opposition legislators who had been linked to the corruption in pork.

Too, the PCIJ sent letters to 20 lawmakers implicated in the pork-barrel cases to secure their side, and conducted interviews with relevant sources from the Department of Justice and other executive agencies, the Ombudsman, and COA, as well as with the lawyers and some of the respondents in the cases pending before the Sandiganbayan. - PCIJ, August 2015