Neri, take your hands off our SSS money

The cat is out of the bag. A quarter of the Arroyo admin’s P50-billion economic stimulus is coming from our contributions to the Social Security System. Malacañang will use P12.5 billion of our private money to spur an economy downed partly by the US financial crisis and mostly by domestic corruption. The stimulus is bound to fail, as with other economic projects conceived in bad faith, with only kickbacks in mind.

Our P12.5 billion is in peril. Its stooge, SSS president Romy Neri, fawningly will hand the money over to Malacañang. Don’t worry, he chatters, he’ll ensure that a government repayment and profit guarantee covers the money. But he’s only lulling us. There’s no assurance he’ll wangle good terms for our cash. Going by his coarse ties with his appointer, he will accede to anything she wants, so long as she retains him as make-believe economic czar. There’s no certainty he’ll even manage our money right. Why, he committed our P12.5 billion to Malacañang without consulting SSS trustees or staff. He acknowledged the P12.5-billion takeout only because the opposition got wind of it.

Neri’s knack and character had been put to test before. In meetings of the SSS board or companies in which SSS has seats, he often was whimsical. In the needless but costly $330-million ZTE deal, as he famously exposed, a fixer offered him P200 million. It was a red flag of a bad government deal a-shaping. Still he approved the contract, for imagined benefits. Conscience-stricken perhaps, he asked an aide in the backroom to try and “moderate the greed.” But when the latter fell into trouble and was kidnapped for silencing, he didn’t lift a finger to help. He testified to reporting the bribery to the boss, but then clammed up about what she did afterwards. All the way to the Supreme Court, risking constitutional crisis and mangling the law, he defended his silence against prying senators. In the end he got a contorted ruling that keeping a presidential chat secret is weightier than revealing the plunder of P10 billion. Yes, he did all that for somebody he calls “evil”.

We SSS members are worried about our P12.5 billion, much more our total P248-billion assets at Neri’s disposal. When she put him at the SSS in Aug. 2008, the game plan was for him to use our money to prop up her tottering regime. In exchange she’d make her Cabinet economic managers report to him. What an expensive ego massage for one who is being made an accomplice in malversation. It’s bad enough that he covered up for a thief; he could himself turn into one.

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Admin Senator Miriam Santiago has asked the NBI to probe which government officials abetted bid rigging in World Bank roadworks. That’s virtually whitewashing her inquiry into the mess. It would have the same effect of the House crudely clearing the colluding constructors and blaming instead the World Bank. More so if agent Arnel Dalumpines will again do the probing.

Dalumpines recently was tasked to study the bribery of prosecutors in the weakened case against the Alabang Boys drug suspects. As expected, he cleared everyone except the whistleblower, whom he accused of being uncooperative. In the ZTE scam, he “investigated” the concocted theft of the contract, which he tried to pin on the whistleblowers.

Now presidential spouse Mike Arroyo has been tied to the collusion. The World Bank released to Newsbreak the testimonies of one Japanese and three Filipino witnesses. They point to Arroyo as the protector of Eduardo de Luna, whom the World Bank has banned from future roadworks. Can the NBI conduct an honest probe of Arroyo? Or should we lay sure bets that the witnesses will end up as the accused?

Truth to tell, all these NBI and admin-controlled congressional inquiries will amount to nothing under the Arroyo tenure. It would be best for the next President to form a team, a la PCGG, to recover the ill-gotten wealth of this admin and its cronies.

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In the Alabang Boys caper, bribe was passed onto a justice official via a bank loan, taken out and repaid on the same day. Here’s another modus, of a sleazy banker who bought political protection for his Ponzi scheme.

Politicos were bribed millions of pesos since 2005 via time-deposit certificates. But the banker advised them not to withdraw the cash outright, but wait five years for it to double. In ironic justice, the bubble burst and the banker closed shop. The politicos were left holding the empty bag. All they can recoup is a maximum P250,000 in deposit insurance, which they had failed to legislate up to P500,000 in time for the banker’s looming fall.

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