'PCGG officials ran up travel bills of $2.27 M'

MANILA, Philippines - They flew first or in the business class, had pocket money equivalent to more than P1 million for a two-day trip, and traveled with a full entourage.

Even worse, they charged the government twice for one foreign trip.

Top officials of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) during the tenure of chairman Camilo Sabio went on numerous overseas travels, flying only first class and giving themselves fat dollar allowances or a “contingency fund” ranging from a minimum of $1,000 to $36,000 dollars, a recent audit of the commission revealed.

The PCGG during Sabio’s time ran up a bill of $2.27 million which they had charged from a $30-million special legal fund with the Philippine National Bank set up by the late PCGG chair Haydee Yorac as a contingency fund to cover legal, administrative and other related expenses to pursue the $22-million West LB case in Singapore, and the $30-million Arelma account in Merrill Lynch in New York.

On top of these, it was learned that the so-called “Sabio Commission” did not liquidate all of the $2.27-million disbursements from the PNB fund for its travels.

An audit conducted by the new PCGG administration, now headed by chairman Andres Bautista, on all the transactions and deals of the “Sabio Commission” found that Sabio had gone on more than 50 foreign trips between September 2005 and June 2010 when the term of former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ended.

This did not even include the other foreign travels he made that he charged to other PCGG-controlled companies.

His close friend and law school classmate, former ambassador to Moscow Jaime Bautista, who he first hired as a legal consultant and then as commissioner of the PCGG, had racked up “approximately 60 foreign trips between June 2006 and May 2010.”

“The former members of the Commission and certain officials traveled so frequently that it is indeed suspect whether such trips were really necessary and advantageous to the government interests which the commission is mandated to protect,” the report said.

The current PCGG has found instances of double-charging or double-billing of foreign travels, since one trip already charged to the PNB fund had also been charged to funds of the Coconut Industry Investment Fund (CIIF) Oil Mills Group, which is the holding company of the oil milling companies bought from the coconut levy fund.

It was learned that Sabio had gone on 10 foreign trips which, upon initial inspection, were charged to the CIIF-OMG between 2006 and 2009.

On closer review, it turned out that Sabio had charged a number of foreign trips both to the PNB special fund and the CIIF-OMG.

“What makes matters worse is that, upon checking the CIIF OMG-funded trips against the records of disbursements from the PNB-retained funds, there were at least two instances of ‘overlap,’” a PCGG report said.

Charging the extravagant foreign travels to the CIIF OMG, it further noted, was ill-timed since the company was then in a financially precarious condition.

“Of these (10 foreign trips charged from the CIIF-OMG), six trips were to attend board/stockholders’ meetings of the United Coconut Planters International based in Paris and four trips were made for the purpose of attending agricultural industry affairs. For his travel alone, CIIF-OMG spent a total of P2,265,121,83.

“Of this total, P714,069.30 or approximately 1/3 thereof represented per diems collected by Chairman Sabio. This occurred at a time when CIIF OMG was incurring heavy operating losses (roughly P1.4 billion from 2005- 2007),” the report said.

It was also discovered that Sabio and the other officials had only flown business class in their foreign travels.

“Whether or not the traveling civil servant is a commissioner tasked ‘to confer with foreign counsel’ or an office assistant tasked ‘to provide clerical support to OSG (Office of the Solicitor General) lawyers’, travel is invariably on business class (based on quoted airfare),” the report said.

It noted that Section 10 of Executive Order 248, as amended by EO 298, mandates economy class air travel for all government officers, whether in local or foreign travels.

“In case officials and employees authorized to travel are not provided with transportation by the host country or sponsoring organization or agency, they shall be allowed official transportation, which shall be of restricted economy class unless otherwise authorized by the President of the Philippines,” the EO said.

The audit also found that hotel expenses of the PCGG officials were not included in their daily subsistence allowance or DSA.

“For a good number of the trips, ‘hotel accommodations’ shows up as an expense item separate and distinct from the requested Daily Subsistence Allowance (DSA) at UNDP (United Nations Development Program) rates. The operational definition of the DSA covers ‘lodging, meals, gratuities and other expenses’,” the report said.

The former PCGG officials were also found to have given themselves a fat “contingency fund” on their foreign travels.

“Aside from ‘representation allowance’, ‘contingency funds’ is another constant in these projected budgets and appears to be arbitrarily determined. There is no detectable standard for the amounts requested (e.g., x amount per day or percentage of total) and these range from a low of $1,000 to a high of $36,000. To reiterate, these have not been subject to any accounting or liquidation,” the report said.

The audit also noted that the foreign trips involved big delegations.

“The sizes of the delegations varied but a delegation size of more than 10 individuals is commonplace. This would be a composite of PCGG and OSG officials. The PCGG delegation would frequently include individuals to serve in a secretariat or administrative manner even as the objectives of these trips arguably would not require extensive secretariat services (as, say, organizing a conference would),” the report noted.

“There are also about 10 instances where the communication to PNB would simply make reference to the travel of ‘PCGG secretariat’ with no mention of who exactly makes up said group, although the number of people can be gleaned from the projected summary of expenses (ranging from three to five). Again, for the most part, each would be given representation allowance of $1,000 per trip and accommodated on business class no matter the destination. No reports were also required to be submitted,” the report added.

The PCGG recently said that it aims to redeem the commission’s image before the public, after the controversies and scandals that hounded the previous officials of the commission.