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MANILA - Two years after the Senate wrapped up its probe into the so-called fertilizer fund scam, the Office of the Ombudsman said Wednesday it has started its preliminary investigation of former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-joc” Bolante.
Assistant Ombudsman Jose de Jesus told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net) that his office -- the Preliminary Investigation, Administrative Adjudication and Monitoring Office (PAMO) -- will finish the investigation in three months.
Bolante, the alleged architect of the P728 million fertilizer fund scam, was deported back to the Philippines on Tuesday after spending two years in detention in the United States where he had tried to seek asylum. He had fled to the United States to evade the Senate’s investigation.
In its investigation, the Senate found that funds meant for farmer-beneficiaries under the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (Golden Bountiful Harvest) program were diverted to the 2004 election campaign of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
“We are in the early stages of preliminary investigation and our office has a minimum of 90 days to resolve the probe as dictated by due process,” De Jesus said.
He added that they sent an order to Bolante to file an affidavit within 10 days to answer the charges against him. “As far as I know, it was he [Bolante] who received the order.”
Bolante, De Jesus said, is under investigation for graft and illegal use of public funds.
But lawyer Harry Roque of the University of the Philippines College of Law said the Ombudsman was doing “too little, too late.”
“Whether or not Bolante is in the country, charges could have and should have been filed against him way before,” he told the Inquirer.
He added that the belated action of the Ombudsman “only proves that the office intentionally sat on the case to give Bolante the excuse in his deportation case that there are no charges filed against him. The Office of the Ombudsman has absolutely no credibility.”
Roque watched over the proceedings of Bolante’s asylum case.
The former agriculture official slipped out of the country just after the Senate issued a warrant for his arrest when he refused to appear in hearings investigating the scam.
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