Noy creates new anti-crime agency, allots P523-million budget

MANILA, Philippines - President Aquino has created a new anti-crime agency, the Anti-Transnational Organized Crime Commission (ATOCC).

The body’s exact composition and functions are still not known as Malacañang has not yet made public the executive order creating it.

However, the Office of the President (OP) has allocated P523.9 million for the new agency in the P1.645-trillion proposed national budget for next year.

Of the P523.9 million, 95 percent or P508 million will be for maintenance, operating and other expenses, including P500 million for confidential and intelligence expenses to be released on the OP’s approval.

Less than five percent or P15.9 million will be for personnel salaries.

The ATOCC has been placed under the OP.

Under the EO, Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. could authorize the use of such intelligence funds.

Ochoa is scheduled to appear before the House of Representatives appropriations committee this morning to defend the P4-billion OP budget.

Two other offices under the OP are concerned with transnational crime: the Office of Special Envoy on Transnational Crime (OSETC) and the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime (PCTC).

The OSETC will have P8.7 million in maintenance, operating and other expenses, and P1.8 million for salaries.

On the other hand, the PCTC will have P35.2 million in maintenance, operating and other expenses and only P1.7 million for salaries.

The Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group (PASG) is no longer part of the OP’s 2011 proposed budget.

For this year, PASG has a budget of P62.7 million, of which P61.4 million is for maintenance, operating and other expenses and only P1.3 million for salaries.

Apparently, ATOCC has replaced the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC), which is part of OP in this year’s P1.645-trillion national budget.

PACC has an intelligence fund of P500 million, whose release is subject to the approval of Mr. Aquino.

The OSETC is also part of the 2010 budget law, but not the PCTC.

It was then President Fidel Ramos who created PACC and named then Vice President Joseph Estrada as its chairman.

When President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took over from Estrada, she chose to keep PACC and its huge intelligence budget.

Arroyo, now a representative of Pampanga’s second district, had at her disposal a total of P650 million in annual intelligence funds - P500 million allotted to PACC and an additional P150 million.

Arroyo had P5.9 billion in intelligence funds during her nine-year presidency.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile has urged Mr. Aquino to give up his intelligence funds.

The OP should not have money for intelligence expenses because it is not a gatherer but a user of intelligence information, he added.

It was Enrile and then Sen. John Osmeña who gave the PACC a P500-million intelligence budget during the Estrada administration.