Court OKs withdrawal of 6 Pharmally cases
The Sandiganbayan has allowed the Office of the Ombudsman to withdraw six pending graft cases that had been filed in connection with the Pharmally scandal, which involved the allegedly anomalous procurement of billions of pesos worth of COVID-19 supplies.
A 12-page resolution issued by the antigraft court’s First Division on Monday said that a sitting Ombudsman has “the power to revoke or alter the rulings of a predecessor within the bounds of law.”
“The Ombudsman is not barred from ordering a new review of a complaint, as he or she may revoke, repeal, or abrogate the acts or previous rulings of a predecessor,” it added.
“After careful consideration of the facts, allegations, and records of these cases, this Court deems it appropriate to grant the withdrawal of the Informations against the accused despite the previous finding of probable cause and subsequent issuance of the warrants of arrest,” it said.
Shortly after he assumed office last month, Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla ordered the withdrawal of Pharmally-related cases filed before the Sandiganbayan, saying he wanted these reviewed to ensure they would “ready for trial” before being refiled.
Lack of coordination
He noted the lack of coordination among the teams handling the fact-finding, evaluation, preliminary investigation and prosecution processes before the filing of the cases.
“Everybody was in the dark; [they were] not working as a complete team. That should be a fully laid-out plan. It can’t be segmented, with one team not knowing what the other is doing,” Remulla said.
He stressed that withdrawing the cases would allow the Office of the Ombudsman to reevaluate these and ensure that the work done by investigators, as well as the Senate blue ribbon committee, would not go to waste.
The Sandiganbayan resolution on Monday covered six graft cases filed against Procurement Service-Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) officials led by former Budget Undersecretary Lloyd Christopher Lao, Warren Rex Hernandez Liong (procurement director), Augusto Menchavez Ylagan (PS‑DBM employee), Webster Marmol Laureñana (acting division chief of procurement), Paul Jasper Villanueva de Guzman (procurement officer) and Christine Marie Lecaros Suntay (administrative/finance director).
On the other hand, the Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp. executives named in the cases were Twinkle Dargani (president), Mohit Dargani (corporate secretary/treasurer), Linconn Uy Ong (director), Justine Garado (director), Huang Tzu Yen (chair), Krizle Grace Ukkong Mago (executive), Lin Weixiong (financial Manager) and Jasonmer Lagarto Uayan (executive).
Low paid-up capital
Investigations conducted by government agencies, including the Senate blue ribbon committee, which held hearings on the controversy from August 2021 to January 2022, found that from March 2020 and July 2021, Pharmally won contracts totaling P11.5 billion, despite having a paid-up capital of only P625,000.
It was the government’s largest single award of contracts for COVID-19 supplies to a private company at the time. The contracts included 8,000 BGI real-time fluorescent RT-PCR test kits (P600 million); 2,000 A*Star Fortitude RT-PCR kits (P688 million); and 41,400 BGI RT-PCR kits (P2.877 billion). Some of the test kits were later determined to be grossly overpriced, expired or about to expire.
Former Sen. Richard Gordon, who led the probe as chair of the Senate committee, had urged Remulla to revisit the case and asserted that former President Rodrigo Duterte should be held responsible for defrauding the government at the height of the pandemic.
“I’m saying he was part and parcel of a conspiracy to fleece the country of at least P11 billion to P47 billion in the Pharmally scandal,” Gordon said in an interview on One News.
This was after then Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said that Duterte had ordered the transfer of P47.6 billion from Department of Health (DOH) coffers to the PS-DBM for the procurement of COVID-19 supplies.
In August 2024, Lao and Duque were charged before the antigraft court with violating the antigraft law over the alleged illegal transfer of P41 billion in DOH funds to the PS-DBM.
In September that same year, Lao was arrested but later released after posting bail of P90,000. He was charged with graft for accepting the transfer and subjecting the DOH procurement to a 4-percent service fee amounting to at least P1.65 billion. The administrative charges against Duque, on the other hand, were dismissed by the Ombudsman.
