What caused the Blue Ribbon Committee hearings?
In the recent audit done by the Commission on Audit, deficiencies in the finances of the Department of Health amounting to 67 billion pesos was found. According to the report, there were irregularities with regard to the proper documentation and the procurement process of necessary equipment used during the pandemic. Some of the funds were used on equipment that have yet to be used or were not used immediately while the majority of the funds were left unused altogether.
In its official announcement, the COA said, "Various deficiencies involving some ₱67,323,186,570.57 worth of public funds intended for national efforts of combating the unprecedented scale of the COVID-19 crisis were noted."
What is Pharmally?
According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) records, Pharmally has been a registered company since only September 4, 2019.
Since then, Pharmally has not reported any sales and even reported a loss of P25, 550 in 2019. It was only in the time of the pandemic that they reported a sales cost of around 7.5 billion pesos after bagging 8.68 billion pesos worth of contracts to supply the DOH with PPEs. At that time, Pharmally only had P650,000 worth of paid up capital, but they were able to supply the DOH with PPEs with no problem, and even sold them at twice the usual retail price of the PPEs. According to the former chair of the Presidential Commission for Urban Poor, Terry Ridon, Pharmally could’ve been a middleman - which is highly unnecessary for transactions such as these - between the Philippine government and Chinese businessmen. Furthermore, they also have tax deficiencies that should have made them ineligible to participate in a government-sponsored bidding in the first place. They have not paid the 2% tax for government payments and the 5% VAT that they should have paid long ago.
During the current Blue Ribbon Committee meeting being attended to by Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon, it was discovered that a subpoena directed towards the company couldn’t even be delivered since according to the security guards of the building where its offices are located, the SEC-registered office has been vacant since 2018.
What will happen now?
Warrants of arrest have been handed out to the 5 executives of Pharmally, namely Mohit Dargani, Twinkle Dargani, Linconn Ong, Justine Garado, and the former presidential finance advisor of President Duterte, Michael Yang, as the hearings are still ongoing. Michael Yang has been avoiding the hearings but finally said that he will be attending the next hearing.
This alleged overpricing of PPEs is another facet of the reported misuse of the funds allocated to the DOH in the recent budgets for the pandemic. The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee will continue to shed light on this issue as the hearings go on.
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