PHARMALLY MESS | Senators recommend graft charges vs Duque, Pharmally execs, ex-budget officials

February 1, 2022 , 09:04 PM

By Clarist Zablan

(February 1, 2022) – The Senate’s anti-graft committee will recommend graft charges against the health secretary, procurement officials and executives of a company linked to a multi-billion pesos questionable medical supplies deal.

In a partial committee report, Senate Blue Ribbon Committee chair Richard Gordon said the panel has recommended charges against Francisco Duque III for violations of anti-graft and corrupt practices act and plunder law.

They also urged graft charges against President Rodrigo Duterte’s former economic adviser Michael Yang, his business asociate Lin Weixiong, former procurement officials Lloyd Christopher Lao and Warren Rex Liong, sitting procurement official Dickson Panti, and Pharmally Pharmaceutical executives Linconn Ong, Mohit Dargani, Twinkle Dargani, Krizle Grace Mago, and Huang Tzu Yen.

“The nation has been betrayed,” Gordon said in the executive summary of the partial report. “While millions are unemployed, have become poorer and hungrier, are desperate even for just a glimmer of hope, what this administration has done is to exacerbate the already execrable and hopeless state the people are all in. None can be more unforgivable.”

JUST IN | Inirekomenda ng Senate Blue Ribbon Committee sa isang partial report nito ang paghahain ng mga reklamo laban kina dating PS-DBM chief Lloyd Christopher Lao, Atty. Warren Rex Liong, at ilang Pharmally executives. | via @maeannelosbanos pic.twitter.com/riz9wsasgO

— News5 (@News5PH) February 1, 2022

The executives and former procurement officials will also face charges of plunder and violation of the government procurement law. Yang will also face plunder charges.

The lawmakers also recommended the deportation of Yang, Lin Weixiong and Qingjin Ke, a director of Tigerphil Marketing, one of Pharmally’s suppliers.

The senators will also seek estafa charges against Mago and Mohit Dargani, and frauds against the public treasury against Lao and Liong, and perjury charges against Yang, Ong, Mago, and Pharmally Biologics official Rose Nono Lin.

The senators added that Duterte must be held accountable for “betraying public trust” by appointing Yang, a foreign national, as economic adviser, and defending his officials and lambasting the Commission on Audit (COA) and the senators while investigations on the anomalous deal were ongoing.

“Based on the President’s own behavior, one cannot help but conclude that he was aware of, allowed, and condoned the misdeeds of his closest associates and appointees. For this, he must be held accountable,” the Blue Ribbon committee said.

Pharmally, a company found to have links with Yang, has been under heavy scrutiny last year after it bagged nearly P11 billion worth of deals to supply medical equipment to the government during the pandemic, despite only having a starting capital of less than P1 million.

Senators unearthed the mess after COA flagged a P42 billion fund transfer from the health department to the budget department’s procurement division in 2020, then headed by Lao, over a lack of proper documentation.

At the Lower House, a similar panel also released a report on the fund scandal last week, recommending estafa charges against Pharmally officials. But it did not seek charges against the budget officials, believing that they did not have a hand in the anomalous deal.

(MM)

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