House leaders want recovery of ill-gotten Marcos wealth under OSG

Top officials of the House of Representatives led by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez want to transfer the task of recovering ill-gotten wealth to the Office of the Solicitor-General.

House Bill 5233 seeks to beef up the functions of the OSG, including giving it the functions of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), which was created in 1986 after the EDSA People Power Revolution to recover ill-gotten wealth, notably those amassed during the term of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Interestingly, current Solicitor-General Jose Calida was the head of Alyansang Duterte-Bongbong (AlDuB), campaigning for a tandem of President Rodrigo Duterte as president and the dictator's son and namesake Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. in last year's polls.

The bill was filed by Alvarez, Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas, and House justice committee chair Reynaldo Umali.

As of late 2016, the PCGG was dealing with more than 200 pending cases on the estimated $10-billion loot, which includes Swiss accounts, properties and assets, jewelry sets, and artworks.

In this light, the bill wants the OSG to have the power to grant immunity from criminal persecution “to any person who provides information or testifies in any investigation” over ill-gotten wealth, including those previously handled by the PCGG.

The bill seeks to do the same for the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel, which serves as the principal law office of government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs).

Moreover, the measure wants to grant OSG “with new powers,” which includes engaging the service of outside counsel “to assist” it in cases “requiring highly specialized legal skills, knowledge or expertise,” such as foreign arbitration and ligitation. Agreements of this nature will be exempt from the Government Procurement Reform Act.

The House leaders explained that cases and matters from both agencies are still brought before the OSG, the law office of the government.

The transfer of powers and functions, they said, will be done “in order to achieve economy, eliminate overlapping of functions, address the expanding needs of GOCCs for legal representation, and enhance government efforts to recover ill-gotten wealth and investigate and prosecute cases relative thereto.”

Under the OP

The measure also wants to move the OSG from the Department of Justice, where it is currently attached, to the Office of the President “for budgetary purposes.”

It likewise seeks to “enhance the prestige and honor” of being SolGen by “upgrading” the post to an equivalent of an associate justice of the Supreme Court, in terms of “qualifications for appointment, rank, category, prerogatives, salaries, allowances, emoluments, benefits, and privileges.”

Further, the bill if passed will increase the number of legal divisions in the OSG “from at least 30 to at least 50, with at least 10 lawyers in each division.”

Authors of the measure argue that in the current setup, solicitors are “overworked, overburdened, and are decreasing in number,” since each one handles an average of 3,000 cases.

They also seek to “equalize” the solicitors’ benefits and privileges with their counterparts in the judiciary, the National Prosecution Service, and the Public Attorney’s Office.

“At present, the OSG merely serves as a training round for lawyers, as they are being lured to higher paying positions in the private sector or in other government offices. The government must provide incentives for lawyers to build their careers in the OSG, and reward those who choose to climb up the ranks and devote the best years of their working life to the OSG,” Alvarez, Fariñas, and Umali said. —JST, GMA News