BY ELLEN TORDESILLAS
FORMER state auditor Heidi Mendoza said she went to the hearing of the House of Representative committee on justice on Tuesday with only one purpose: to tell the truth of what she knows about the misuse of military funds when Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia was comptroller.
For what she did, she won overwhelming support from the public long dismayed by rampant corruption in government.
“It is out of my commitment to my responsibility as an auditor, a public auditor, that I need to bring out the truth and bring the report to the people, to whom I am accountable,” she said in her opening statement.
Mendoza’s testimony about the pressures she had to put up in uncovering military corruption was so moving, especially when she tearfully appealed to spare her family from harm.
“Maawa kayo sa akin. Maawa kayo sa mga anak ko (Have pity on me. Have pity on my children),” she pleaded, adding that in coming out she didn’t want to hurt anybody.
A daughter of a policeman, she said she took on the challenge of investigating corruption in the military “to give honor to the soldiers who risk their lives in defense of the country.”
Bayan Rep. Teddy Casino told her during the hearing, “You have raised us a notch higher as Filipinos.”
Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, in a statement, said: “I love Heidi Mendoza. I admire her a lot. She must be a very brave woman. We in the public must try and give her support as much as possible.”
Reactions in Facebook, Twitter and blogs express admiration for her. She is in the top spot of the trending topics in Yahoo.
As astounding as the courage of Mendoza was the refusal of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez the government prosecutors to acknowledge the evidence even if it was staring them in the face.
Heidi related that from the very beginning when then Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo requested her help in the investigation of the then military, Acting Commission on Audit Chairman Emmanuel Dalman cautioned her, “Dahan-dahan lang (Go slow).”
When she asked for clarification, Dalman said, “Kasi tinawagan tayo ng Palasyo (Because the Palace called us).”
Mendoza said what she can remember of Dalman’s words of caution was it came from the office of the Executive Secretary.
Former Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, who was at the hearing, denied categorically that he gave the instruction for Mendoza to slow down in the investigation.
Mendoza said her investigation covered the pension funds, the United Nations fund for peacekeepers, Balikatan and modernization funds.
In 2005, she made a presentation to Assistant COA Commissioner Emma Espina who discouraged her from doing a report of what she had discovered.
Later it was the COA chair himself, Guillermo Carague, who told her, “Don’t make the report anymore. Anyway, the Ombudsman (Marcelo) has resigned.”
She was dismayed. She asked what was she going to do with the 12 boxes of evidence she had gathered. He said Carague told her: “Simple. Return the documents to where you got it.”
Since COA was not interested in her report, she made a Financial Investigation Report and submitted it to the Ombudsman. She said she never had a meeting with Gutierrez unlike during the time of Marcelo with whom she worked closely .
Some of the irregularities that she discovered:
- P50 million of the P200 million from the UN in a convoluted and irregular deposit process that could not have happened without the cooperation of bank officials. Three accounts were opened at the United Coconut Planters Bank, Alfaro branch where Ethel Bondoc was the manager. One account for P100 million, another for P50 million supposedly another fro P50 million. But the last P50 million had a passbook but it was not in the system. Later on another P50 million account at the Tordesillas branch of UCPB surfaced which the AFP and UCPB said was the missing P50 million. But Mendoza said the source of that P50 million was not the P200 million.
- Discovered clearing accounts in Land Bank General Santos and Iloilo branches involving amounts as huge as $5 million. The wife of former comptroller Lt. Gen (ret) Jacinto Ligot is from General Santos City while that of Garcia is from Iloilo.
Rep. Roilo Golez said the practice is called “floating accounts”: where money can be “parked” even for a day and earn million of pesos in interest.
When Assistant Special Prosecutor Joseph Capistrano said the UCPB and Bondoc issued a certification that the P50 million was not missing and was found at the UCPB,Tordesillas branch, Mendoza revealed a private mail from a member of the investigating team of the United States Department of Justice who said Bondoc told them the UCPB did a “coverup” of the missing P50 million.
In the midst of all these, Gutierrez still insisted their evidence against Garcia is weak. She denied allegations of illegal fixes.
“We can probably swear to God, if somebody profited here, may he or she be struck by thunder and die this instant,” she said.
Mendoza said her appearance in the House investigation was not to convict Garcia. But she said she felt she has no right to demand good governance from the government if she did not get out and tell the public what she knows.
She said she wants to give a face to the nameless hardworking government employees who are not corrupt.
(Photo of Mendoza at the House hearing by Mike Taboy of Abante.)