Angara’s Acef is just the tip of the iceberg

The alleged involvement of former senator Edgardo Angara in the Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (Acef) scam (“2 lawmakers gained from farm subsidies,” Front Page, 5/5/14) is only one among the many anomalies he has been linked to in Commission on Audit (COA) reports.

To begin with, as the COA itself has found in its audit of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), from 2007 to 2009 the former senator coursed at least P243.16 million of pork barrel funds to nongovernment organizations with certain irregularities, or without liquidated balances. For instance, he channeled P24.96 million of this amount to “The Assembly of Gracious Samaritans Foundation Inc.” and to the Technology Resource Center without any form of liquidation.

Similarly, another P14.4 million was transferred to the “Kalusugan ng Bata, Karunungan ng Bayan, Inc.” (KBKBI)—a foundation where Angara was an incorporator but which, according to the COA, was located in a nonexistent address under the name of a nonexistent tenant. Of Angara’s total PDAF releases to the KBKBI, only P5 million of the released funds was apparently liquidated.

However, even more damaging to the people of Aurora than his involvement in these PDAF transactions has been his role in the creation of the controversy-ridden Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport (Apeco). Apeco, as Angara’s brainchild, has long been accused by Aurora province residents and rural development advocates of transgressing an entire spectrum of laws which protect small landholders’ rights, such as those provided under the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (Republic Act No. 8371) and the Carper Law (RA 9700).

But Angara’s Apeco venture has also been found by the COA on various occasions to have suffered from various anomalies in its use of public funds. Indeed, in its latest publicly-available audit on the 12,923-hectare freeport, the COA found that the freeport has yet to account for at least P23.8 million in unliquidated cash advances in 2012—a figure 58 percent higher than its unliquidated advances of P13.8 million in 2011.

Beyond this, a COA report maintained that Apeco had failed: to keep a physical inventory of property and equipment allegedly worth P575.7 million; to properly document “doubtful” transportation expenses declared by the ecozone at P906,996; to submit copies of government contracts and purchase orders for COA scrutiny; and to establish an internal audit service. It also engaged in the hiring of “dispensable and unnecessary” consultants worth a total of P9.1 million, resulting in “inessential expenses.”

That all these irregularities have been linked by the COA to former senator Angara’s pet projects signals a crying need for a more thoroughgoing investigation of his possible enmeshment in scams beyond Acef. This, especially, is direly needed to resolve complaints of land-grabbing and the systematic misuse of taxpayer money being leveled against him by Aurora residents who have reached out to Task Force Anti-Apeco.

It is our hope that the relevant authorities in the government will undertake this investigation as soon as possible.

—JERIK CRUZ,

policy and communications coordinator,

Task Force Anti-Apeco,

jerik.cruz@gmail.com