Remulla orders recall, review of Pharmally cases in antigraft court
Just days after his appointment, Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla said on Monday he has ordered the withdrawal of cases filed before the Sandiganbayan over the multibillion-peso Pharmally scandal so that these could be reviewed and evaluated for refiling.
“I gave instructions to withdraw first the cases of Pharmally, where there has been no arraignment yet with the Sandiganbayan because I want to reevaluate the cases. I want to know the details which are put into the cases because they really matter,” he said at a press briefing.
“I want the Sandiganbayan to have a good grasp of the cases immediately. What I want is for the cases to be all ready for trial when we file the information at the Sandiganbayan,” Remulla added.
According to him, there was a lack of coordination among the fact-finding, evaluation, preliminary investigation and prosecution teams that handled the cases before.
Uncoordinated efforts
“Everybody was in the dark; [they were] not working as a complete team … It should be a fully laid-out plan. It can’t be segmented, with one team not knowing what the other is doing,” Remulla said.
“That is why I really thought it would be wiser to withdraw these cases so that we could reevaluate them, to make sure that the work done by the investigators, the Senate, and everyone involved in uncovering the Pharmally cases would not go to waste,” he explained.
He said that around six to eight cases related to the Pharmally scandal had been filed before the Sandiganbayan, including two in which the accused were already arraigned. He said that he expected more cases to be filed following the review.
Asked how long the reevaluation and review will take, Remulla replied: “Not long, because [the cases] already underwent preliminary investigation. We just need to study the resolution thoroughly based on the evidence we collected from the investigation and what we have here at the Ombudsman.”
Forgotten cases
Shortly after he took office on Oct. 9, Remulla said his immediate tasks would include a review of the Pharmally case, which he noted seemed to have been “buried in oblivion.”
“But these kinds of cases shouldn’t really be forgotten because we know the allegations have weight,” he said.
Based on an investigation conducted by the Senate blue ribbon committee probe from August 2021 to January 2022, Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp. was awarded P11.5 billion worth of contracts despite having a paid-up capital of only P625,000.
It was the single biggest chunk of government contracts for COVID-19 supplies awarded to private companies at the time.
The contracts included 8,000 BGI real-time fluorescent RT-PCR test kits totaling P600 million; 2,000 A*Star Fortitude RT-PCR test kits worth P688 million; and 41,400 BGI real-time fluorescent RT-PCR kits worth P2.877 billion.
The Senate inquiry led by then blue ribbon committee chair Sen. Richard Gordon resulted in a draft report that endorsed criminal charges against several public officials and private individuals. But it was archived at the close of the 18th Congress in June 2022 as the majority of seated senators at the time refused to sign it.
In a recent interview, Gordon urged Remulla to revisit the case and to hold former President Rodrigo Duterte liable for defrauding the government at the height of the pandemic.
He accused Duterte of being “part and parcel of a conspiracy to fleece the country of at least P11 billion to P47 billion in the Pharmally scandal.”
