t was a long shot,
the possibility of "Joc Joc" Bolante telling all in the ongoing Senate inquiry
into the P728 million scam. Bolante chose to protect his principals. And that’s
it. We’ll just have to add the fertilizer scam to the list of crimes sans
criminals committed under this administration, ranging from the "Hello Garci"
tapes to the P329 million national broadband deal.
The senators have done their best. The inquiry, we suppose,
will continue to find out the exact how’s of taking P728 million from the
treasury, laundering the money through simulated purchases of fertilizers and
distributing the proceeds among Gloria Arroyo’s allies for election spending.
That around 30 percent of the money ended up in the hands of suppliers, all
handpicked by Bolante, could be charged to the cost of money laundering.
The courts, upon the petition of the Anti-Money Laundering
Council, have frozen P176 million in bank deposits identified with Bolante and
two "NGOs." Transactions related to these accounts show a clear pattern of
trying to hide the source of the money. These accounts, however, are just the
tip of the iceberg. These are not related to the fertilizer scam but to another
billion-peso raid on the treasury, this time via the Livelihood Corp. at the
time it was chaired by Bolante.
The search for truth will have to wait for another day,
hopefully after Arroyo quits the scene in 2010 although we are not betting on
this given the current mad rush to amend the Constitution.
At this point, attention will have to be focused on the
Ombudsman which after two years of inaction has suddenly come to life and is now
rushing a preliminary investigation of Bolante.
And it’s not because we expect Ombudsman Merceditas
Gutierrez, the law classmate of Mike Arroyo, to undergo an epiphany and come to
recognize her duty and faithfully execute it.
Rather, we want to know how Gutierrez could pull off another
miracle that would free Bolante from future prosecution similar to what happened
to her former boss, Hernando Perez, on the $2 million bank deposits allegedly
extorted from Mark Jimenez, the movements of which had been documented and
brought to the attention of Manila by Swiss authorities.
Bolante must have secured some assurance before he decided to
lie straight-faced before the Senate inquiry. So here’s our scenario: Charges
will be filed against Bolante. He will be arraigned before the Sandiganbayan and
the charges will subsequently be dropped for some technicality. Bolante becomes
a free man with the guarantee he could not be prosecuted after Gloria on the
ground of double jeopardy.
Neat, no?
