GMA Brandtalk
Tracking
Archives
Sandiganbayan: 4 Cebu execs guilty in P11M graft case
Four officials of the Cebu City local government were convicted of graft by the Sandiganbayan for letting unliquidated cash advances accumulate to P11.18 million in the span of over two years. In a 43-page decision, the anti-graft court's First Division held the four officials liable for allowing a paymaster to accumulate cash advances from September 1995 to March 1998. The city executives are Alan Gaviola, then city administrator; Eustaquio Cesa, then city treasurer; Benilda Bacasmas, then cash division chief; and Edna Jaca, then city accountant. They were found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of violating Section 3(e) of Republic Act 3019 or the Anti-graft and Corrupt Practices Act. The four were sentenced to six to eight years imprisonment, barred from holding any government position, and ordered to pay P11.18 million equivalent to the full amount of cash advances in question. An audit team at that time discovered that paymaster Cleofe Delute of the Cash Division of the City Treasurer’s Office had accumulated unliquidated cash advances of P11,180,033.92. Delute was later convicted of malversation and is currently serving her sentence at the Bureau of Corrections. During the trial, the prosecution argued that the Delute could not have committed the administrative offense without the participation of her four superiors, given that they affixed their signatures on the documents containing irregularities. In its decision, the anti-graft court agreed and said: “It is well to note that their signature followed a sequence. The voucher could only be forwarded to the next office if already signed by the prior office," the court said. "The accused were expected to have done what was required of them to be able to truthfully affirm the pre-typed certification in the voucher. This includes the first step in the process and the very basic act of examining the voucher and its attachments, but which the accused had failed to do," it added. The court noted that the following indicators could have served as giveaway signs for her superiors to easily notice that Delute’s transactions were defective:
- Only “sheets of bond paper" served as Delute’s requests for cash advances;
- The requests did not clearly show they were for payment of salaries because each request merely showed a handwritten note reading: “Cash Advance – 1,000,000.00";
- The net amount of the payrolls as reflected in the adding-machine tape attached to the written requests was rounded off, and this rounded-off amount was entered in the disbursement voucher in violation of paragraph 4.2.1 of COA Circular No. 97-002 which states the cash advance shall be equal to the net amount of the payroll for a pay period;
- The subject vouchers only state uniformly, “TO CASH ADVANCE IN THE AMOUNT OF (various amounts) IN PAYMENT FOR SALARIES", without specifiying the pay period and to which department the salaries would be paid, in violation of paragraph 4.1.1 of COA Circular No. 97-002 that “ no cash advance shall be granted unless for a legally specific purpose."
