Alcala, NFA head face P457-M plunder complaint

MANILA, Philippines - Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala and National Food Authority (NFA) administrator Orlan Calayag are facing plunder charges before the Office of the Ombudsman for allegedly pocketing P457.2 million from a P4.1-billion rice importation deal with Vietnam eight months ago.

Lawyer Argee Guevarra, in a 10-page criminal complaint, also accused Alcala and Calayag of violating various provisions of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act by entering into what he called a manifestly and grossly disadvantageous contract.

Guevarra said that sometime in April 2013, NFA officials transacted with Vietnam Southern Food Corp. (Vinafood II) general director Truong Thanh Phong for the importation of 205,700 metric tons (MT) of rice.

Calayag, deputy administrator Dennis Guerrero, and alleged  “broker/fixer” known only as “Buddy R” reportedly checked in at the Shangri-La Hotel in Makati City on April 1, 2013 and met with Vinafood officials.

Weeks later, the trio flew to Vietnam without official clearance for a meeting with Truong “ostensibly to conclude the deal,” Guevarra said.

After Vietnam, Guerrero and Buddy R. reportedly flew to Singapore and stayed at the Hyatt Hotel in Room 1501. Truong and Vinafoods officials were billeted in the same hotel.

“Why this unofficial meeting? These and the circumstances described hereunder lead to the conclusion that an exchange of kickbacks occurred in Singapore,” Guevarra said.

On May 8, the complainant said Guerrero and Buddy R. flew back to Vietnam where they met NFA deputy administrator Ludovico Jarina to arrange an increase in the minimum access volume (MAV) and allow more imports under a government-to-government (G2G) scheme.

Based on his computation and taking into account other factors like cost insurance flight, freight on board, shipping and cost of delivery to warehouse, Gueverra said the overprice amounted to $50.75 per MT or $10.439 million (P457.240 million).

The alleged kickback, he said, was a “a virtual ‘pork,’ the use of which is under respondents’ absolute power and discretion.”

“The transaction was concluded in a cloak and dagger operation, without the concerned NFA officials having been cleared for official travel. This smacks not only of irregularity but of outright corruption in the form of secret deals for kickbacks,” he said in his complaint.

“For this April G2G alone, public funds lost to corruption amounted to $10,439,275 or P457 million, a windfall for a single transaction,” he said. “This sufficiently explains the DA’s and NFA’s overzealous insistence on pushing the private sector out of the international rice trade business,” he said.

Guevarra argued that the contract with Vietnam was supposedly for the import of only 187,000 MT of rice but the NFA allegedly inserted an additional 18,700 MT to push the import volume to 205,700 MT without any prior approval from the Department of Finance (DOF) under the Fiscal Incentive Review Board.

“The NFA Council for its part merely acted as Secretary Alcala’s rubber stamp, acceding to his and respondent Calayag’s absolute control of the rice trade,” Guevarra said.

“Despite crystal clear indications that the imported rice was overpriced, and that the additional 18,700 MT insertion was illegal; and despite the imperious need to address the rice crisis, the NFA Council merely bowed in submission to respondents’ every wish and design,” his complaint read.

“The string of circumstances or series of respondents’ acts, criminal in themselves even when taken singly, point to the fact that plunder was the ultimate goal, i.e. to amass for respondents an enormous sum of money representing the difference between the overpriced imports and the actual price thereof,” he said.

Guevarra said that what the respondents had transacted with Vietnam was a monopolistic G2G rice smuggling and not importation.

He also said Alcala and Calayag “deliberately opted” to ignore the June 30, 2012 expiration of quantitative restrictions (QR) imposed on private rice importation when they made the transaction with Vietnam.

“The reason is not as lofty and noble as to protect local rice farmers from foreign competitors. The diabolical plan is to preserve government monopoly over rice importations in order to earn large kickbacks for themselves by reason of their public offices,” the plunder complaint read.

“By ‘importing’ millions of sacks of rice for the next three months, Proceso Alcala and company (are) bound to sack almost P2 billion in cold cash. This, after just a few months when he sacked P400 million,” Guevarra, in a statement issued after the filing of the charge sheet, said.

He even tagged Alcala as the “biggest scammer” in the Aquino Cabinet “not only because of his habitual empty promises of rice self-sufficiency and ill-transparency in rice importation, but more so because he used Typhoon Yolanda as an excuse to import more overpriced rice instead of rehabilitating farmlands to restore the agricultural livelihood of farmers in the Visayas.”

Guevarra said he is challenging Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales to conduct a special investigation into the G2G rice deal between Alcala and Vietnam and promptly slap the officials with plunder charges before the Sandiganbayan.