President Duterte must keep a tight rein on state security funds and other multitrillion-peso assets that appeared to be the favorite targets of grafters, plunderers and other scammers in the past and at present. The mainstream media and the cyberspace are littered with stories of multibillion-peso scams of every size, shape and make.
In particular, the President should focus his attention on state funds from the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), Social Security System and the Home Development Mutual Fund, more popularly known as the Pag-IBIG Fund, each with multibillion-peso security currencies used in placements and other money transactions in local and
foreign markets.
Most of their foreign transactions are curiously riven by secrecy and employ foreign brokers, people who have no public accountability at all, especially in interest-rates earnings for state funds invested in the global currency transactions. Members of these three big financial institutions and the public are usually kept in the dark.
The best way to keep a tight control on state funds is to make every transaction transparent as required by Executive Order (EO) 2 that President Duterte himself issued on July 23, 2016, and a related law, Republic Act 9485, signed by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on June 2, 2007, “To improve efficiency in the delivery of government service to the public by reducing bureaucratic red tape, preventing graft and corruption, and providing penalties therefor.”
EO 2 “operationalizes in the Executive branch the people’s constitutional rights to information and the state policies of full public disclosures and transparency in public service and providing guidelines therefor.”
The issue of transparency came to the fore again this week when a special interest group advancing the welfare of government employees from around the country was appalled that state-owned GSIS has allegedly chosen to be secretive about its investment activities, despite their repeated requests for complete accounting and transparency on the matter.
Renowned lawyer Jesus I. Santos, speaking for the Confederation of Government Employees Organizations Inc. and the National Association of Lawyers for Justice and Peace, said the two organizations have since asked the GSIS to account for multibillion peso worth of pension funds deployed in overseas markets ostensibly for the benefit and welfare of millions of GSIS members but that their pleadings continued to fall on deaf ears.
A former GSIS director, Santos has written the then-officer in charge of the Office of the President and general manager at the fund a letter for the group to be informed on the financial standing of GSIS funds and assets, copies of the board resolution, investments and expenses of then-GSIS President and General Manager Robert Vergara, as well as explain why the provident funds of the late former GSIS trustee Alejandro Roces and that of his own were denied them.
Roces, former President Diosdado Macapagal’s education secretary and a National Artist awardee for literature, and Santos, known for his strong advocacy against illegal logging in the Angat Dam watershed, the major source of potable water for Metro Manila and a great part of Bulacan, were appointed board members of the GSIS by Arroyo and had served their term with distinction until 2010 when President Benigno S. Aquino III took over
the presidency.
Before he died in 2011 at the age of 86, Roces made a will, with his family and Santos as his witnesses, that his provident fund benefits earned as GSIS trustee be donated to a charitable institution. Up to now, the GSIS strangely refused to release their provident funds while the benefits of other trustees had already been released.
Santos, now 92 but still active in legal practice, and his clean-environment advocacies bewailed the continued refusal of the GSIS to release their benefits. “I and Anding Roces worked as trustees at the GSIS and earned the benefits that continued to be denied us,” he protested.
Santos also dwelt on the controversial sale of the 18-story Philcomcen building along Ortigas Avenue that the GSIS sold to the Gotianuns of Filinvest for some P772 million as part of the pension fund’s earning with no mention of the total principal amount involved in the deal of the prime property.
Then GSIS OIC President and General Manager Nora Malubay-Saludares told Santos in a letter that the investment decision of the GSIS board of trustees and management he has sought are subject to so-called disclosure guidelines under Board Resolution 241 on November 24, 2011, that vested those decisions a level of secrecy categorized as Highly Classified Information that may not be shared so openly with anyone.
Such commercially sensitive transactions, Saludares claimed, have very limited disclosure range.
But Santos is not satisfied with her explanation knowing the laws that give greater transparency, efficiency and safeguard on GSIS investment decisions against all type of transactions.
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.