Carpio sees ‘badges of fraud’ in Pharmally deals

Retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio said Friday government officials involved in the transactions with Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corporation for the procurement of medical supplies last year could be held liable under the law.

Carpio said the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) issued the inspection report for the products which were still in China.

“They said we have inspected the goods and they are in good order. But the goods were not here in the Philippines. They were still in China. So this is falsification of a public document under the Revised Penal Code,” he said in an online forum.

Carpio also called Pharmally a “paper corporation” with only P625,000 in paid-up capital.

“Pharmally was just a paper corporation, yet Pharmally bagged a total of P8.9 billion worth of negotiated contracts with PS-DBM in just three months in 2020. This is a record in the Philippines if not in the world,” he said.

He said the test kits delivered by Pharmally had a six-month expiration period in violation of the bidding specification, which is at least two years.

“That is why the Senate found out that half a billion pesos worth of test kits expired and had to be thrown away — a huge waste of government resources,” he said. “All these facts show badges of fraud, what we lawyers call badges of fraud.”

Carpio also linked President Rodrigo Duterte to the delivery of supplies bought from Pharmally.

“AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) planes and Philippine Navy ships picked up the goods in China. Philippine Marines trucks were used to transport the goods from the airport to the seaport to government warehouses. All these shipping expenses should be deducted,” he said.

“Now it’s very clear, only the President could have ordered the AFP planes and Navy ships to go to China. So the President was on top of the situation in the purchases of Pharmally.”

Duterte admitted on Wednesday that he ordered the use of government planes to transport medical supplies bought by the government from China.

But National Task Force Against COVID-19 chief implementer Carlito Galvez Jr. clarified that government resources were not used to transport supplies purchased from Pharmally, which has been the subject of an investigation by the Senate blue ribbon committee.

Health Undersecretary Charade Mercado-Grande, meanwhile, said the RT-PCR test kits with six months shelf life were not near expiry, saying it was the “standard shelf life of those novel diagnostic test kits at the time.”

“Additionally, test kits are fast-moving stocks that have to be used immediately since we are in a pandemic. Our COVID-19 laboratories were able to test our kababayan using these procured test kits,” Mercado-Grande said in a statement last week.

Carpio also addressed Duterte’s recent threat to bar Cabinet members from attending the Pharmally investigation.

The retired magistrate said the President could not do that since the Senate probe was in aid of legislation.

Duterte could not invoke executive privilege as well as the probe does not involve national security, he added.

“How can there be executive privilege in a face mask purchased by PS-DBM? There is possibly no way you can invoke executive privilege,” Carpio said.—LDF, GMA News