UP student regent expelled for alleged malversation of funds

The University of the Philippines Student Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) has recommended the expulsion of former student regent Hanna Eunice Serana for alleged embezzlement of some P15 million in public funds she had solicited from the Office of the President for what turned out to be a ghost project.

UP president Dr. Francisco Nemenzo said the SDT also recommended the expulsion from the state university of Serana’s brother, Jose Ian, a philosophy graduate student, for having acted as principal conspirator. "Usually, this matter requires the approval of the Board of Regents (BOR) but in this case, it is the university regents as a body who filed a complaint against Serana and her brother," the UP president told The STAR.

The Seranas allegedly spent a huge sum of the money to put up a Cebu-based party-list group BINHI. Nemenzo, however, said the Seranas may still appeal their case before the BOR, which is the highest policy-making body in the country’s premier state university.

He added that criminal charges have also been filed against the two before the Office of the Ombudsman. "They had not enrolled in the university since they were implicated in the irregularity," he said.

Serana, then a senior Political Science student at the UP in Cebu, was elected as student representative to the 12-member BOR in 1999 for a one-year term of office. Her appointment was supported by the KASAMA sa UP, an alliance of all student councils in the university system.

News of the SDT’s precedent-setting 13-page ruling was first reported in the Feb. 18, 2002 issue of the UP Newsletter, a community newspaper published by the UP administration.

The Seranas have been accused of putting up a ghost project to renovate the UP Vinzons Hall Annex and rename it as the President Joseph Ejercito Estrada Hall using funds obtained from the Office of the President two years ago. Serana passed off the project as an official one, convincing Regent Raul De Guzman, brother-in-law of then President Joseph Estrada, that the various student councils in the university had passed a resolution in support of the program. It was an unwitting De Guzman himself who set-up a meeting between Serana and Mr. Estrada. In the end, Serana was able to convince Mr. Estrada to fund the project.