Stark lessons from PDAF scam

Against the stupefying sums now routinely being mentioned in connection with anomalous flood control and other infrastructure projects—P1 trillion possibly lost to corruption in the past 15 years, according to Sen. Panfilo Lacson, and P180 billion of taxpayers’ money said to have passed through the bank accounts of controversial contractor couple Curlee and Sarah Discaya—the pork barrel scam of 2013 has been looking quaint and puny by comparison.

Does anyone still remember that political earthquake of 12 years ago, when the country’s governing order was shaken to its foundations by document-supported allegations of corruption and plunder that ensnared scores of senators, congressmen, and other government officials?

The scheme, first exposed in this paper, was ingenious and sprawling: Lawmakers got hefty kickbacks from the congressional pork barrel funds allocated and then diverted to bogus nongovernment organizations set up by businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles.

The general estimate now is that the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) scam accounted for the disappearance of some P10 billion in public funds. The controversy led to the imprisonment of three sitting senators at the time: Juan Ponce Enrile, Bong Revilla Jr., and Jinggoy Estrada, all charged with the nonbailable crime of plunder along with members of their staff who were said to have received the bribes in their name.

Most reviled person

For her central part in the fraudulent enterprise, Napoles became for a time the nation’s most reviled person. Since 2018, the purported mastermind of the scam has been serving time in prison following multiple convictions for her crimes.

But her legal troubles aren’t over: Just two weeks ago, Napoles was again found guilty of 13 counts of money laundering related to the same case, in a suit filed by the Anti-Money Laundering Council. “This sends a strong message: Those who abuse public funds will be held accountable,” said AMLC executive director Matthew David.

Unfortunately, there may indeed be a message there, but it’s the opposite of what David thinks. What comes off from Napoles’ latest conviction is that justice, as usual in this country, is excruciatingly slow, and whatever strong element of deterrence the judicial punishment may carry has been lost to that years-long gross delay.

Note, too, the fate of the three highest officials sent to jail for the PDAF scam. Enrile, facing 15 counts of graft and the charge that he received P172.8 million in kickbacks, was first allowed by the Supreme Court to post bail for “humanitarian reasons,” and then got his freedom back for good when the Sandiganbayan accepted a demurrer on his plunder case.

Small fry

Revilla walked out of jail on the strength of a Sandiganbayan acquittal—but curiously was also ordered by the court, along with his co-accused, to return P124.5 million in plundered funds to the government. Revilla has coughed up not a single cent of that money, insisting he has no obligation to pay anything back.

Estrada, meanwhile, accused of receiving commissions worth P55.79 million, was acquitted by the Sandiganbayan of plunder, along with Napoles. But he had separate graft charges involving the alleged misuse of P200 million in PDAF funds. Early this month, the anti-graft court denied his petition to dismiss the charges, even as he is now once more among the senators accused of having received kickbacks in flood control projects.

In these cases, the individuals who ended up punished more by the system for their alleged complicity in the crimes were the small fry, the senators’ hired hands. Enrile’s chief-of-staff, Gigi Reyes, spent nine years in jail. Lawyer Richard Cambe, an aide to Revilla, was convicted of plunder, sentenced to 40 years’ imprisonment, and died inside in 2021.

Stark failure

And it was Estrada’s former deputy chief-of-staff, Pauline Therese Mary Labayen, who “primarily benefited” from the pork-barrel windfall, ruled the Sandiganbayan. Labayen remains at large.

The PDAF scam may have been the biggest political storm to hit the country before the raging public works controversy that now buffets the government, but as time has shown, successfully prosecuting even one high-profile suspect in such cases has been, by any measure, a stark failure.

Such institutional inability to punish powerful wrongdoers is what has led to the appalling run of impunity now bedeviling the country. From P10 billion in stolen PDAF funds, the loot is now in the trillions of pesos—for why would the unscrupulous stop their greed at some point when the authorities and the courts are expected to fail to catch up once again?

The flood control mess may still produce a different outcome, but only if the public can sustain its outrage. The people’s refusal to forget this time should force not only the Marcos administration to act promptly against those who trash the law, but also the courts to do their part by stepping up and rendering justice with more vigor and less delay.