2 ex-Maguindanao police chiefs face malversation raps

MANILA, Philippines - Charges of malversation were filed against two former police chiefs of Maguindanao and other police officers in the province before the Department of Justice (DOJ) over millions worth of unaccounted firearms.

Charged by the Philippine National Police (PNP) Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) were Superintendent Abusama Maguid and retired Superintendent Mangelen Adam, former directors of Maguindanao Police Provincial Office; Insp. Bona Malam-pong Tamboka and SPO1 Pendulat Sambolawan, both of the Shariff Aguak police station; PO1 Warden Legawan, assigned at Maguindanao headquarters; and PO1 Samsudin Abdullah, assigned at Datu Saudi Ampatuan Municipal police station.

Also charged were PO1 Aldulkahar Edris, PO1 Aratuc Zaman Maulana, P02 Datu Odin Baulo and P03 Gerardo Pama.

Based on the complaint, Maguid failed to account for the PNP-owned firearms consisting of 35 refurbished M16 rifles valued at P66,675 each or a total of P2.33 million.

The 35 units were part of the 54 armalite rifles turned over to Maguid on November 2008 for various municipal stations in Maguindanao.

The firearms were not officially entered and recorded in the property book of the Police Regional Office-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (PRO-ARMM) because these were not presented to Zenaida Dajao, the Regional Supply Accountable Officer of the province.

“Demand letters were made by RSAO, PRO-ARMM to P/Supt. Abusama Maguid to return the missing and unaccounted PNP properties but he failed to produce/account for the PNP properties, to the damage and prejudice of the government,” the complaint stated.

The complaint was among those that stemmed from the massacre of 57 people in the province on Nov. 23 last year.

Initial investigation by authorities showed that some of the firearms used in the killings belong to the PNP. This prompted authorities to conduct a thorough inventory of its properties and equipment in ARMM.

Police and military officials also conducted raids that led to the recovery of several high-powered firearms and ammunition, including PNP-issued guns, from houses and properties of the Ampatuan clan, who were tagged in the massacre.

Among those recovered were PNP firearms declared in 2008, which were part of the 109 assorted firearms destroyed in a fire that gutted the supply room of the 1508th Provincial Police Mobile Group office located at Camp Datu Akilan Ampatuan, Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao.

The said firearms were issued to Adam, Tambokan, Sambolawan, Legawan and Abdullah.

The PNP-CIDG also filed a separate complaint of malversation of public funds against Edris, Maulana, Baulo, Pama, Sambolawan and Adam for their failure to return to the PNP two Toyota Hilux Patrol Jeeps and seven motorcycle units issued to them.

Search for Ampatuan guns continues

Meanwhile, policemen searching for hidden weapons at the Ampatuan residential compound nearly dug up a private graveyard inside, but balked after relatives of the former governor told them not to desecrate the site where three clan members were buried.

Superintendent Alex Lineses, acting Maguin-danao police director, said Saturday’s search for hidden guns inside the two-hectare compound was their fourth since Nov. 23 and carried out on the basis of a warrant issued by Judge Melanio Guerrero of the Regional Trial Court Branch 15 in Cotabato City.

“We’ve received prior information from an informant that military-type firearms were buried at the burial site there and in three other spots inside the same compound, so we initiated the search,” Lineses said.

Raiding authorities recovered dozens of assault rifles, M60 machineguns, K3 mini squad automatic weapons and M16 armalites in different places in the compound during their three previous search operations there.

Lineses said they did not touch the private graveyard as a matter of religious protocol and in consideration of the request of clan members to spare the site from searches.

Two Ampatuan sons - Saudi, who was a mayor of Datu Piang town in Maguindanao, and Hofer, and their brother-in-law Nasuchion Macapandeg — were buried in their private burial site.

Hofer was killed in a shootout sparked by an altercation with supposed friends in a disco in Cotabato City on Dec. 18, 2003 while Saudi and Macapandeg perished, along with 16 others, in the Dec. 23, 2003 bombing at the town proper of Datu Piang.

“We were not stopped by the Ampatuans inside the compound from carrying out the raid last Saturday because we showed them a valid search warrant. But when we were to check the surroundings of the graveyard, they requested us not to touch the site,” Lineses said.

Police and Army intelligence operatives were convinced that hundreds of firearms are buried there.

The mayor’s elder sister, Rebecca Ampatuan, former chief-of-staff of the Office of the Regional Governor of the ARMM, said not a single firearm is buried in their family graveyard.

“We don’t want the graves of our relatives dug because its desecration,” she was quoted by Lineses as saying.     — With John Unson