Diokno denies hand in no-bidding lease deal of Nayong Pilipino
BUDGET Secretary Benjamin Diokno denied any involvement in revoking the bidding requirement for the lease contract of Nayong Pilipino Foundation Inc. (NFPI).
“We should not distract ourselves from the main issue here,” he said in a statement released on Tuesday.
Diokno’s statement came after sacked Government Corporate Counsel Rudolf Jurado tagged Diokno and Finance Secretary Sonny Dominguez 3rd as the ones who “removed bidding process on [the]Nayong Pilipino contract.”
Jurado claimed that the Governance Commission for GOCCs (GCG) and its ex-officio members, Diokno and Dominguez, came up with a January 2018 circular that overturned earlier released rules that required public bidding for a piece of land bigger than a hectare that will be leased for more than 10 years.
“Ultimately, it is the GOCC (government-owned and -controlled corporations) governing board that has full responsibility and accountability for its decisions, ” Diokno said.
The budget chief added that “a review of the facts and law on the matter contradicts Jurado’s position.”
“In fact, an investigation by the Department of Justice has concluded that the NFPI lease contract with Landing Resorts Philippines Development Corp. (LRPDC) is void ab initio or has no legal effect from the beginning,” he said.
Earlier, Palace spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said that a justice department investigation showed that NFPI’s lease contract with a Hong Kong casino developer was void from the start, which “rebuts” the claim of sacked NFP board of trustees chairperson Patricia Yvette Ocampo that public bidding was not required for the deal.
In early August, President Rodrigo Duterte fired the entire Nayong Pilipino Board of Directors over the alleged “grossly disadvantageous” 70-year lease contract between the Philippine government and LRPDC, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based gaming and casino company Landing International.
Duterte also called for the lease agreement to be cancelled. MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO
The post Diokno denies hand in no-bidding lease deal of Nayong Pilipino appeared first on The Manila Times Online.