‘Innocent until investigated’

While watching the movie Syriana on DVD at home, some very familiar dialog tickled my ears in the scene between the lead actor, George Clooney (who won the recent Golden Globe Award for his role in this movie as a career agent of the US Central Intelligence Agency), and Christopher Plummer (as head of a Washington D.C law firm engaged in lobbying in the US Congress). In this particular scene, Clooney meets Plummer in a diner in which the latter tells him: "In this town, you’re innocent until you’re investigated."

The dialog of Plummer turned out funny to me, perhaps, because it sounded very close to home. My instant reaction to Plummer’s quip was to associate it with the common lament of people here accused of wrongdoing, whether they are private persons or government officials who are dragged into congressional investigations.

I think the specter of being summoned to any Senate or House inquiry prompted an immediate reply to my column last Jan.13 when I wrote about a brewing scandal involving the German firm Rhinemetall Defence Electronics GmbH (RDE) which I warned might erupt into another full blown legal tussle on their contract to do a P800 million project in the country. The project was funded through a loan by the government-run Kreditanstalt fuer Viederaufbau (KfW) of Germany extended to the Philippine Merchant Marine Academy (PMMA), which is a state-run university for prospective marine engineers, deck officers, and seamen.

The specific contract of RDE with the PMMA involved the supply and upgrade of training facilities for the building of a dome replete with state-of-the-art full mission ship bridge (the control center of a ship), and ship engine training simulators, computer infrastructure and delivery of one complete training ship with lifeboats and davits, port facilities to berth the ship, emergency power upgrade to make the PMMA independent from local power suppliers, among other components. They won the project for the PMMA in a Europe-wide international bidding after it gave the lowest offer plus the qualifying factor of having a local counterpart company. The RDE local partner was originally the Filipino International Resources, Science and Technologies (FIRST Corp.), headed by German national Michael J.Heinen, which was supposed to handle the after-sales components of the project as required in the bidding rules.

As I understood it, the project is due for completion and turn over by next month. However, it got snagged by allegations of "ghost" deliveries of supplies, use of secondhand materials, bribes, insurance scams, and other reported fraudulent activities that reached the attention of KfW. These allegations of corruption that went into this project, being undertaken at the PMMA campus in San Narciso, Zambales, supposedly came from the reports submitted to KfW by the Bank’s project monitor Roland Scheffczyk.

However, from the letter-rejoinder I received from Commodore Fidel E.Dinoso, president of the PMMA, Scheffczyk supposedly denied having submitted to the KfW any such derogatory report. Dinoso clarified that the same German national was connected with the Roggie Marine Consulting (GmbH) which is the KfW-designated Consultant firm for their project and has been staying at the campus to assist the PMMA in the proper implementation of the project. As consultant, it was his responsibility, among other things, to see to it that everything is conducted above board and according to the terms of the loan agreement.

"Therefore, if indeed there was a report on improprieties in project implementation, the writer of the report was in effect reporting his own failure to do his job. Was he (Scheffczyk) out of his mind? Assuming there was a report, it could have been a deliberately biased report by an individual who had an axe to grind: Mr. Scheffczyk, you see, was fired (his contract was not renewed by Roggie Marine) because of what one might call ‘professional differences.’ And it could only have been made after he was forced to leave the country in early December last year when his visa expired," Dinoso wrote.

However, it was not only the supposed report of Scheffczyk to the KfW that started these allegations of anomalies in this project but similar charges were also aired to the RDE by Heinen, through his Filipino lawyer here. But like Scheffczyk, Dinoso claimed, Heinen had also been fired.

"Put mildly, his (Heinen) contract was not renewed. So he, too, may be, another axe grinder. Now comes this very noble lawyer supposedly helping noble Heinen to stop the defrauding of Filipino and German taxpayers. The charges are nothing short of libelous. False and fabrications, to say the least. There may be other individuals with questionable motives involved here. We can only hope that when the smoke and the pollution clears, we can continue to provide the country with the training facilities needed to produce marine officers that can command the respect of the international maritime community – an image and standing that we are pledged to enhance and protect," Dinoso stated.

The same column also drew e-mails on the same subject matter coming from a certain Cenon Bobadilla, a PMMA graduate. He says that Scheffczyk had been KfW consultant and project director "from inception to completion" of this questioned project and in fact, he has been at PMMA for more than two years already. My reply: If this has been the case, I don’t think the KfW, as a government-run bank, would have ignored, much less tolerated any such hanky-panky in their funded project here.

From Joey dela Cruz, [email protected], he wrote: "The RPLS Juan Luna (training ship) is still berthed in Subic although it has been scheduled to be at San Narciso since April 30, then July 8th, then October, then end of December 2005. The Germans and their Filipino representative seem not to know what they are doing but continue to get change orders. Their provisional acceptance certificate had also been approved and signed even if second hand delivery and ship not yet in place! Most despicable and corrupt approvees. A report of the findings has been forwarded after inspections made by KFW auditors. Inspite of the report of the second hand deliveries, no action on the matter has been done by the authorities of PMMA although copies of this report has circulated in PMMA."

Now that we have presented both sides, I suggest that these charges and counter-charges be better sorted out in the Office of the Ombudsman, the proper agency to investigate whether there is indeed basis or none to prosecute individuals who might have allegedly disadvantaged the government’s interests in this project.

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