Pursuit of wealth

Poor Mariano Bravo. With the national spotlight currently shining on inaccurate SALNs, or statements of assets, liabilities and net worth, his suspension was inevitable.

Bravo is the assistant secretary for administration, legal and financial affairs of the Department of Science and Technology. In October 2010, the Office of the Ombudsman suspended him for a month after finding him guilty of violating Republic Act 6713, or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees.

He elevated the case to the Court of Appeals. The other day the CA upheld the Ombudsman.

Bravo’s offense: failure to identify a brother-in-law in his SALN.

The CA threw out his argument that the omission was inadvertent, an honest mistake. That might have been so, but public officials, according to the CA, must discharge their duties with utmost responsibility, integrity and competence.

Bravo can use the month-long suspension to enjoy a vacation. But suspension is never good on one’s résumé, whether received in school or in any office, and even if it’s only for the minor offense of simple negligence.

Earlier this month, an agrarian affairs specialist of the Land Bank of the Philippines in Davao City flunked a lifestyle check conducted by the Revenue Integrity Protection Service (RIPS – I’m sure the acronym is intentional) of the Department of Finance (DOF). Elmer Lucero Olores now faces criminal and administrative charges for failure to file his SALN from 1991 to 1999, and then for five more years until 2009.

In the years that he did file his SALN, Olores allegedly omitted mentioning certain assets, while those he declared, including farm lots, a dump truck and a tractor, were not supported by his gross annual income of P318,600.

The DOF-RIPS started conducting such lifestyle checks early in the Aquino administration, starting with its own agencies. In November 2010, RIPS filed criminal and administrative charges against an employee of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) in Cagayan de Oro City. Revenue officer Alexander Go Fuentes was accused of accumulating assets beyond his income, including a six-door apartment, a three-story office building, a steel truss garage and several motor vehicles. He also failed to file his SALN from 1982 to 1986.

Such cases are not unexpected in offices such as the BIR and the Bureau of Customs, where a clerk can afford to acquire a Porsche.

Still, the common reaction to such stories is that the small fry are the first to fry, while the big fish get away.

Even the properties attributed to Fuentes are considered piddling when compared to the amounts believed to have been pocketed by public officials past and present who have been implicated in large-scale corruption or are accused of accumulating ill-gotten wealth.

Cases against the big fish move slower I guess because of the amounts involved, and because those accused of stealing big usually can afford the best defense lawyers.

But recent cases involving non-compliance with requirements in filing SALNs should lead to a sea change in the pursuit of wealth among public servants.

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As Deng Xiaoping famously exhorted his Chinese compatriots, to get rich is glorious. There is nothing wrong with wanting to grow one’s wealth.

Even the wealthy can want more wealth. As socialites like to say, one can never be too thin or too rich!

Chief Justice Renato Corona, in a statement the other day, intimated that he – an Ateneo and Harvard alumnus – wasn’t exactly born poor, and that he didn’t have wealth that could be classified as unexplained.

With Corona’s continuing travails, however, and those random cases pursued by RIPS, public servants should henceforth be more careful about the paths they take in getting rich.

Equally important, everyone will have to start paying attention to the requirements involving the filing of SALNs.

The requirements are so detailed a public servant has sighed that he even has to declare books he has acquired within the year covered by the asset declaration. Perhaps that requirement is meant to cover acquisitions of antiques or quaint memorabilia; rare books can be enormously expensive. An original of the first edition of the Superman comic book series sold at auction for over $2 million.

Those detailed requirements used to be ignored by many government employees. Now they will have to scrutinize their SALNs, and possibly require professional assistance in filing their next one. Or else leave government service.

That plan to conduct seminars nationwide on the proper filing of SALNs is a good one. It could spare many public servants from the fate of Mariano Bravo. Ignorance of the requirements is no excuse for non-compliance.

For those who willfully break the law, there’s RIPS to deal with them, and the Office of the Ombudsman.

In rare cases, there is the impeachment court.