Abad faces plunder charges anew

Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad (Official ohoto)

MANILA –The Office of the Ombudsman (OMB) filed charges of plunder, corruption, and malversation against Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad for purportedly getting involved with the misappropriated release of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) funds to senators as bribery for them to vote for the impeachment of former Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Detained Senator Jinggoy Estrada was the one who revealed that P50 million was given as ‘incentive’ to him and to 19 other senators to vote in favor of Corona’s impeachment.

Philippine Constitution Association (Philconsa) former president Lawyer Bonifacio Alentajan then filed a complaint to the Ombudsman using Estrada’s statement as basis.

Abad, for his part, admitted releasing DAP funds to lawmakers. He clarified, however, that he did not do so to influence their decisions regarding Corona’s impeachment case but to finance them in their programs which were intended to accelerate the country’s economic development.

With Abad’s statement, Alentajan argued that the Philippine Constitution prohibited the budget secretary to transfer DAP funds outside the executive department without legislative authority.

The former Philconsa president then urged the OMB to place Abad under preventive suspension while the investigation of his case remained ongoing.

The Supreme Court had already declared the DAP unlawful as the Constitution provided that ‘no money shall be paid out of the treasury except in pursuance of an appropriation made by law.’

“[The] tenor and context of the challenges posed against the DAP indicate that the DAP contravened the Constitution by allowing the executive to allocate funds of its various agencies in the guise of [the] President exercising his constitutional authority to transfer funds out of savings to augment the appropriations of offices within the executive branch of the government,” Alentajan said in a Manila Bulletin report.

“The challenges are further complicated by the interjection of allegations of transfer of funds to agencies or offices outside the executive,” he added.

President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, although also linked to DAP, was spared from the lawmaker’s complaint as he was immune from suit as the President of the country.

Last year, Abad also faced charges of misappropriation, conversion, and misuse of DAP funds. The complaint was filed by several youth groups.