Gloria Arroyo may face plunder over PCSO spy fund
Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, now Pampanga representative, may face charges of plunder over allegations that she had approved the allocation of hundreds of millions of pesos in charity funds for possibly nonexistent projects.The smoking gun: board memoranda of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) requesting additional funds for intelligence operations that she approved from 2008 to 2010.
Former PCSO General Manager Rosario Uriarte on Thursday confirmed before the Senate blue ribbon committee that Arroyo had signed or initialed the memos in her presence.
The PCSO spent P325 million in confidential intelligence funds from 2008 to 2010, according to Uriarte.“These are very damaging. The Ombudsman should take a look at these testimonies and see what liability the former President has,” Senator Franklin Drilon said after the hearing.
Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, chair of the blue ribbon committee, was more forthright: “It implicates the former President in this whole mystery. It makes her a coconspirator… When you steal more than P50 million, it’s plunder.”
The anti-plunder law defines plunder as the direct or indirect amassing by a public official of at least P50 million in ill-gotten wealth through a combination or a series of acts like misappropriating public funds and illegal disposition of government assets. Plunder is a nonbailable offense.
In Malacañang, presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said the Aquino administration would not hesitate to file charges against Arroyo if the Senate probe would yield enough proof to link her to any wrongdoing.
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, however, said the committee could not pin down Arroyo over Uriarte’s disclosures.
“Of course the approving authority is the President. The President probably relied on their representation. There are a lot of things that have to be unearthed first before you can pin down the responsibility for the approving authority,” Enrile later told reporters.
Being a member of the House of Representatives, Arroyo could not be invited to the inquiry.
Grilled by senators for hours, Uriarte said the PCSO made the biggest spending—P138 million out of the approved P160 million in intelligence fund—in 2010, an election year.
Arroyo signed the PCSO memos requesting additional intelligence funds from 2008 to 2010 and in Uriarte’s presence. The former PCSO executive pointed out that all intelligence funds needed the President’s approval.
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