Gov’t agencies asked to place anti-corruption mechanisms
A number of government agencies have been asked to put anti-corruption mechanisms that will help the Task Force Against Corruption (TFAC) do its job, Department of Justice (DoJ) Menardo Guevarra said Saturday.
“The DoJ has written to other government agencies requesting them to create internal anti-corruption mechanisms with which the task force may directly coordinate,” he said.
Aside from this, Guevarra said the DoJ-led TFAC is also discussing with the Office of the Ombudsman (OMB) the possibility of “deputizing OMB senior investigating officers in selected government agencies to be identified by the DoJ.”
“The DoJ is giving attention to these organizational and institutional arrangements so that actual investigation and prosecution may proceed smoothly and systematically in the months to come,” the Justice Secretary explained.
Guevarra pointed out that the TFAC has received over 60 complaints and reports of corrupt activities in the past two weeks which he observed includes “relatively small transactions while others involve irregularities or projects worth hundreds of millions of pesos.”
“The complaints/reports pertain to allegedly corrupt acts or transactions that happened under previous and current administrations,” said the Justice Secretary.
He noted that these allegations include the regional and district offices of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), Bureau of Customs (BoC), Department of Transportation (DOTr), Land Transportation Office (LTO), the Department of Health (DoH), the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), Land Registration Authority (LRA), Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), Bases Converstion Development Authority (BCDA), and the APO Production Unit.
“The Secretariat has started referring these complaints/reports to the Opcen (Operations Center) evaluation committee composed of experienced State prosecutors to determine which ones should be given priority and vigorously pursued by special investigating teams to be created by the task force,” Guevarra said.