Category: Investigative Reports

Expense reports of 5 new senators, PNoy’s LP, NPC still bad, defective

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IF RULES on campaign finance will be followed, only five winning senatorial candidates will be allowed to assume office on June 30, 2013. That is, until the rest of the candidates and their nominating parties submit a complete Statement of Election Contributions and Expenditures (SOCE) by June 29, 2013.

The question is: Should the seven other new senators who have yet, together with the political parties that nominated them, to fully comply with their obligation in law to file true and complete SOCEs be allowed to assume office?

As of June 25, seven winning candidates for senator had actually “fully complied” with the SOCE requirements: Alan Peter S. Cayetano, Francis Joseph ‘Chiz’ G. Escudero, Mary Grace Poe-Llamanzares, Cynthia A. Villar, Paolo Benigno ‘Bam’ A. Aquino IV, Gregorio ‘Gringo’ B. Honasan II, and Loren Regina ‘Loren’ B. Legarda.

The Campaign Finance Unit (CFU) of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), however, recommends that Aquino and Legarda not be allowed to assume office until their respective nominating parties, the Liberal Party (LP) led by President Aquino and the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), submit supporting information and documents.

Too, it was only today, June 27, that the opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) led by Vice President Jejomar Binay finally submitted receipts and other documents to correct its SOCE deficiencies.

Republic Act No. 7166 (Synchronized Elections Law) requires every candidate and political party to submit a “full, true and itemized” SOCE within 30 days after Election Day. Failure to do so prohibits a winning candidate from entering office until he/she has filed such statement.

The legal prohibition from assuming office also applies to a winning candidate if the political party that nominated him/her fails to file its SOCE.

The Comelec Law Department and CFU will issue a Certificate of Compliance to candidates, parties, and party-list groups that submitted “complete and compliant campaign finance disclosure reports and statements.” This certificate is required before a candidate is allowed to take oath of office.

Candidates and parties were required to submit the SOCE until June 13, 2013. Comelec, however, gave candidates and parties a grace period lasting until June 29 to fully comply with SOCE requirements.

The grace period was given to encourage candidates and parties to file and complete their submissions. But a running fine of P1,000 per day was to be applied for those found in non-compliance.

Read out full report in www.pcij.org

PCIJ’s Malou Mangahas is Marshall Mcluhan Fellow

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MALOU MANGAHAS PICTURE

THE PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM’S Malou Mangahas has been chosen as the Marshall Mcluhan Fellow for 2013  for her outstanding work in the field of journalism.

The award was announced Thursday by the Canadian Embassy after a panel discussion by veteran journalists on the topic Reporting the 2013 Campaign and Elections during the Jaime V. Ongpin Journalism Seminar organized by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.

Mangahas was chosen from among the panelists by a committee of distinguished senior journalists. The award was named after the famed Canadian communications theorist Marshall Mcluhan. The Embassy of Canada and Sunlife Financial are the main sponsors of the annual Mcluhan Fellowship.

As this year’s Mcluhan fellow, Mangahas is entitled to a ten-day familiarization and lecture tour of Canadian media and academic institutions. She will also be conducting a lecture tour of selected Philippine universities under the auspices of the Canadian embassy.

Mangahas started out by pounding the beat for national broadsheets during the Marcos regime, before being appointed as editor-in-chief of the Manila Times. Later, she would become the senior correspondent of Reuters news agency in Manila, and the first editor in chief of www.gmanews.tv.

Mangahas also served as Vice President for Research and Content Development for GMA-7 News and Public Affairs, before assuming the role of Executive Director of the PCIJ. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) and the Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists (FFFJ).

Mangahas was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1998-1999.

PCIJ begins new round of investigative reporting seminars

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

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THE PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM (PCIJ) has begun a new round of investigative reporting seminars throughout the country, starting with a four-day seminar in Cebu for journalists based in the Visayas.

The seminars, conducted with support from the National Endowment for Democracy, will focus on the theme Political Clans, Governance, and Journalists’ Safety. The seminars aim to introduce national, regional, and community journalists to the basic concepts of investigative reporting. This round of seminars may be followed by another round of seminars on advanced investigative reporting next year.

The Cebu seminar will be followed by another one for Mindanao journalists in July, Luzon journalists in August, and journalists from the National Capital Region in September.

Nineteen journalists are participating in the Cebu seminar. They include correspondents, publishers and editors-in-chief, and reporters from Siquijor, Leyte, Samar, Iloilo, Cebu, and Negros.

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Offshore leaks data now online; BIR ready to probe Pinoys on list

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TODAY, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) lifts the veil of secrecy on offshore accounts with its public launch of an interactive database of 2.5 million leaked files covering the secret trust accounts and companies of politicians, businessmen, con men, and other parties, in tax havens across the world.

The ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database allows users to search through more than 100,000 secret companies, trusts and funds created in offshore locales such as the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, and Singapore.

In a statement, ICIJ director Gerard Ryle said: “Secrecy creates an environment where fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, and other forms of corruption thrive. The Offshore Leaks Database helps remove this secrecy.”

“Opening up the records serves the public interest by bringing accountability to an industry that has long operated in the shadows,” Ryle said.

ICIJ is a project of The Center for Public Integrity that is based out of Washington, DC.

The launch of the public database coincides with the meeting next week in Northern Ireland of the G8 industrialized countries that will be chaired by British Prime Minister David Cameron. “Tax evasion, after all, is a central theme in the meetings,” ICIJ noted.

The data are part of a cache of 2.5 million leaked files ICIJ analyzed with 112 journalists in 58 countries.

The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) wrote the Philippine reports as the country partner of ICIJ.

Since April 2013, stories based on the data — the largest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organization — have been published by more than 40 media organizations worldwide, including The Guardian in the U.K., Le Monde in France, Suddeutsche Zeitung and Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Germany, The Washington Post, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The Offshore Leaks web app was developed by La Nacion newspaper in Costa Rica for ICIJ. It will go live at 10 pm EST Friday June 14 (4:00 CET on Saturday June 15).

Appropriate notice is posted for all users before they can access the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database: “There are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. We do not intend to suggest or imply that any persons, companies or other entities included in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database have broken the law or otherwise acted improperly. If you find an error in the database please get in touch with us.”

WHAT NEXT FOR THE PHILIPPINES?

In light of the public launch of ICIJ’s database, PCIJ asked the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) how it plans to evaluate the data, according to relevant tax and other laws in the Philippines.

BIR Commissioner Kim Jacinto-Henares said she welcomes the public release of the database, saying it can aid the agency’s efforts to gather more leads and information that could result in tax investigations and cases.

“We will look into it and match (the information on Philippine residents in the database) with income tax returns,” she told PCIJ.

“First, what we will do simultaneously is get confirmation and data from the various governments that have control of the banks so they can provide us the information. Secondly, at the same time, we will check with the income tax returns whether the taxes they have paid support those kinds of assets,” Henares said.

While opening or owning an offshore account per se is not a violation of Philippine laws — because such outward investments have been allowed following the deregulation of foreign exchange markets in the 1990 — Filipinos earning money abroad, except overseas Filipino workers, are generally required to report such income when they file their tax returns in the Philippines, she added.

Taxes paid to governments of countries where such income is earned are generally credited against taxes payable in the Philippines, according to Henares.

Read the PCIJ report:
“BIR ready to investigate Pinoys with offshore accounts”

Check out the ICIJ’s press dispatches:
* ICIJ Press Release
* How La Nacion Costa Rica developed ICIJ’s App
* ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database: The Names Behind Secret Companies, Trusts
* Q & A: The ICIJ Database

The ‘air war’ for votes in May 2013: Bets, parties spent P2.2B on TV ads

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ELECTIONS in the Philippines, especially for candidates to national office, are considered to be primarily “air war” affairs.

This was, in fact, what happened again in the May 2013 elections, which saw most of the moneyed candidates for senator, and the administration and opposition political coalitions, splurging on political advertisements like there was no tomorrow.

Our latest report. “The ‘air war’ for votes in May 2013″, is authored by PCIJ Training Director Che de los Reyes.

According to Nielsen data that PCIJ reviewed, the candidates for senator, the political parties, and some party-list groups waged pitched ad battles on television during the last balloting, and at the cost of stupendous sums.

TV ads seemed to have worked wonders for the victors. There were a few others, however, who spent big but lost big, too.

During the 90-day official campaign period, the 12 winning candidates for senator and their political coalitions — administration Team PNoy and the opposition United Nationalist Alliance or UNA — altogether spent an indicative total of P1.18 billion on TV ads alone.

Five other candidates for senator who lost incurred another P466.58 million in TV ad expenses during the period.

Team PNoy and UNA, meanwhile, spent a combined total of P154.32 million on TV ads that featured their candidates.

But that is not the end of the story.

Even before the official campaign period could start, Nielsen data show that the two coalitions and 14 candidates for senator had aired “advocacy ads” from Nov. 11, 2012 to Feb. 11, 2013. Altogether, these ads amounted to another P424.87 million.

Combined, the sums show that the composite spending on TV ads alone of the two coalitions and their senatorial candidates totaled P2.23 billion in six months (November 11, 2012 to May 11, 2013), or an average of P371.11 million a month, or P12.37 million a day

And wait, there’s more.

Nine senatorial candidates and one party-list group would have breached the airtime limit for political ads on TV had it not been for a crucial order from the Supreme Court regarding a new rule being imposed by the Commission on Elections (Comelec). One of those nine candidates would have also surpassed the campaign-spending limit.

Seven of the nine actually won, while the party-list group, Buhay, eventually garnered the most number of votes among party-list groups and is poised to occupy three seats in Congress.

Last April 16, less than a month before the elections, the Supreme Court issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) on the “aggregate time limit” rule imposed by Comelec.

The TRO effectively reverted the counting of advertising minutes to the “per station” basis, just like in the May 2010 presidential polls.

Read our latest report, The ‘air war’ for votes in May 2013:

Main: Without SC TRO, 9 Senate bets, Buhay liable for breaching TV ads airtime limit
Sidebar: Serious, furious
Sidebar: Pre-campaign ad blast