Ex-AFP general facing plunder rap is new prisons chief

President Benigno Aquino III has named a recently retired military general as the new Bureau of Corrections head. In a text message to GMA News Online on Thursday, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima confirmed that retired Lt. Gen. Gaudencio Pangilinan is the new BuCor chief. A member of the Philippine Military Academy Class of 1979, Pangilinan is one of the respondents in the plunder complaint filed by former military finance officer George Rabusa. The last post Pangilinan held in the service was commander of the Armed Forces of the Philippines' Northern Luzon Command based in Tarlac. He retired on July 25 upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 56 that day. Pangilinan will take his oath before De Lima at 2 p.m. on Thursday. The bureau is an attached agency of the DOJ. The BuCor was cast in a bad light last May following the unauthorized departure of former Batangas governor Jose Antonio Leviste from the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City. At the height of the controversy, then BuCor chief Ernesto Diokno resigned from his post. Plunder suit Incidentally, the time of Pangilinan's oath-taking will coincide with a DOJ preliminary investigation hearing on the plunder complaint where the retired Army general is impleaded as a respondent. The complaint was filed last April by Rabusa against three retired AFP chiefs and other ranking retired and active military officials. In his plunder complaint, Rabusa claimed that Pangilinan received P88.2 million in the alleged conversion of AFP funds for the personal use of the military's top brass. All 22 respondents, including former AFP chiefs Diomedio Villanueva, Roy Cimatu and Efren Abu are required to submit their counter-affidavits on Thursday and face the DOJ panel led by Prosecutor General (formerly chief state prosecutor) Claro Arellano, the highest ranking government prosecutor. Aside from Pangilinan, the other respondents in the complaint include former military comptrollers Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia and Lt. Gen. Jacinto Ligot. Also impleaded as respondents are Maj. Gen. Hilario Atendido, retired Maj. Gen. Epineto Logico, Brig. Gen. Benito de Leon, Col. Cirilo Donato, Col. Roy Devesa, Maj. Emerson Angulo, retired Maj. Ernesto Paranis, Col. Gilbert Gapay, Col. Robert Arevalo, Capt. Kenneth Paglinawan, and retired Maj. Gen. Ernesto Boac. — RSJ/LBG/HS, GMA News