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| By RIZAL S. OBANIL The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) yesterday filed graft charges against ZTE witness Rodolfo "Noel" Lozada Jr. before the Office of the Ombudsman for alleged failure to conduct competitive bidding for the procurement of P15 million worth of materials, equipment and services in 2006 while he was still president of the Philippine Forest Corp. (PFC). Also charged with violation of Section 3(e) of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act or R.A. 3019 is Gerardo Cariņo, PFC vice president. NBI spokesperson and Anti-Graft Division chief Allan Contado said that Lozada and Cariņo will also be charged with violation of Sec. 10 of R.A. 9184 which states that "all procurement shall be done through competitive bidding." Contado said the evidence against Lozada and Cariņo were based on the Commission on Audit (COA) report submitted for the year 2006. He said the COA report showed that most of the PFC purchase orders for materials and services in 2006 were done as "emergency purchase" or "negotiated purchase" and not through competitive bidding as required by law. Contado said competitive bidding can only be disregarded if there is limited sources for bidding or selective bidding, direct contracting or single source procurement, repeat order, shopping and negotiated procurement. "In other words, PFC tried to legitimize its procurment by making it appear that the mode of acquisition was through emergency, shopping, or negotiated purchase thus avoiding the require competitive bidding," he said. All disbursement vouchers, obligation slips and purchase orders were reportedly signed by Lozada and Carino. The NBI said that among other items and services procured without public bidding were a Toyota Hilux worth R1,431,124; Optra Chevrolet, R599,000; materials and labor for landscaping of the oval frontage of the old NAMRIA building, repair of old garage and construction of nursery with the NAMRIA compound, worth R1,094,909; consultancy services to develop financial and business models, information memorandum for PFC, R90,000; purchase and installation of PABX and LAN system for PFC, R209,283; 35 Boer goats worth R700,000; fencing materials and construction of fence for the goats, R325,000; Marketing Strategies and Future Directions Visioning Exercise and Team Building Exercise, Design and Execution of Marketing Strategies "Economy of Green," worth R1,460,000; Marketing PushPinoy Komiks, R528,640; Website Server Hosting and Maintenance, R124,656 and a Toyota Camry 3.5Q worth R2,049,700. |
| QUOTE (spellspinner @ May 21 2008, 05:19 PM) |
| This is one of those cases that are easy to file, but trouble to litigate. Unfortunately, if one is out of the government agency that is filing suit, the accused is at a disadvantage because the said agency can produce/create incriminating documents. |