Pharmally's Krizle Mago leaves House custody
MANILA, Philippines — Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp. officer Krizle Grace Mago is now out of the House of Representatives’ protective custody after requesting that she be released from it, House good government and public accountability panel chair Rep. Michael Aglipay (Diwa party-list) said.
Aglipay told reporters Wednesday that Mago left House premises on Monday after she wrote to the chamber’s leadership that she wanted out of the protective custody that she sought back in October.
"She wrote a letter to the leadership last week that she wanted to leave. So we allowed her," Aglipay said in Filipino.
Mago testified before the Senate that Pharmally, the company at the center of investigations on the government’s spending on pandemic supplies, tampered with the expiry dates of face shields it sold to the government.
Following this explosive testimony, Mago went missing, only to surface at the House where she sought protective custody as she supposedly “cannot speak freely” about the congressional probes involving her company.
She then appeared at a House hearing where she recanted her earlier testimony at the Senate on the tampering of face shields.
Pharmally execs in Senate custody
Senate security personnel over the weekend arrested Pharmally executives Mohit and Twinkle Dargani as they were about to leave for Malaysia. The Senate had cited them in contempt for refusing to turnover documents related to an ongoing Senate panel investigation.
The Senate Blue Ribbon committee has found that Pharmally, the government’s favored pandemic supplier which was new and undercapitalized, was backed by President Rodrigo Duterte’s former economic adviser Michael Yang, who has distanced himself from the company and its dealings.
Senators have also bared Pharmally's incomplete and allegedly anomalous procurement papers, and possible privileges afforded to the firm that were not extended to local manufacturers, among others.
Meanwhile, the Senate Blue Ribbon committee’s counterpart in the House chaired by Aglipay has worked to dispel allegations of overpricing in the supply contracts. — with a report from Bella Perez-Rubio
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