Senate wants to review entire P1.425-billion intelligence funds

MANILA, Philippines - The Senate wants to review the entire P1.425-billion intelligence funds set aside by the Aquino administration out of the P1.645-trillion national budget for next year.

“We would like to take a look at intelligence funds in the entire bureaucracy,” said Senate finance committee chairman Sen. Franklin Drilon.  

“We want an entire picture of how much would be the intelligence fund of the entire government structure because we suspect that this is being abused,” he said, citing the case of Clark Development Corp. president Benigno Ricafort, who was allocated P10 million in intelligence funds last year.

Drilon noted that intelligence funds are not actually audited. 

“It is called liquidation by certification. We call it envelope system of liquidation. You write in a piece of paper the use of intelligence fund to purchase intelligence information for Juan de la Cruz, you put it in an envelope, you seal it, you give it to the Commission on Audit (COA), and you have liquidated the amount,” he said, stressing that the COA can open the so-called envelope but cannot question it.

“In the security area, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) use this to purchase information. But this has been abused so that everybody is now under the rubric of an intelligence fund,” he noted.

Asked if he will scrutinize President Aquino’s own intelligence funds reportedly reaching P1 billion in the 2011 budget, Drilon said he merely wants to “look into it” right now.

“As I said, they might be using these funds for operations of agencies under the Office of the President. What we are just after is the transparency of the use of funds,” he said.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, who earlier this month wanted the intelligence funds of the Office of the President slashed, backtracked from his earlier position.

He said he has no problem retaining it provided that the allocation will be used for a commission the executive department has created. 

The Senate boss was referring to the Transnational Crime Commission.

Enrile admitted that the same was done during the creation of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) when funds were allotted for the SGS (Societe Generalle de Surveillance) of the Bureau of Customs during the time of former President Joseph Estrada. 

Enrile, then chairman of the Senate committee on finance, reiterated that the Office of the President is not an intelligence-gathering organization. 

“It is a user of intelligence. Every intelligence material obtained by any agency of government is filtered to Malacañang for the information of the president,” he said.

Wanted: GOCC ‘czar’

Sen. Ralph Recto, on the other hand, urged President Aquino to appoint a GOCC “czar” who would oversee the performance of government corporations and financial institutions.

He said the GOCC czar would be put in charge of ensuring that dividends from their annual incomes are remitted to the National Government.

Recto’s proposal is on top of the creation of the Senate oversight committee on public enterprise.

“Some GOCCs need adult supervision. It is time for the President to assign a Big Brother who would watch over their operations,” he said.

However, Drilon said there is no need for the President to appoint a GOCC czar but he could create a body that would look into the GOCCs and make sure that their salaries and compensation are not too excessive.

“What I intend to do is have that body in the executive or the DBM or both agencies review and come up with the salary standardization for all the GOCCs. We need the law because at least 27 GOCCs are exempted from the social security law,” he said.

Drilon noted that these 27 agencies are authorized by law to fix their own compensation by the Board of Directors.

But Recto said the designation of a GOCC czar would be needed after the executive branch is finished ridding itself of losing and idle GOCCs and government financial institutions (GFIs) following the Senate probe on the “fat cats” in these government instrumentalities.

He said the GOCC czar could be plucked out of President Aquino’s present crop of economic managers or advisers “but a new appointee whose sole job is to be chief overseer of these GOCCs would be most preferable.” – With Jess Diaz