CASE FOR OMBUDSMAN

ALCALA — A group of tobacco farmers filed on March 16 a case for plunder before the Office of the Ombudsman against former Fifth District Rep. Mark Cojuangco and his wife, incumbent Fifth District Rep. Carmen Kimi Cojuangco.

They accused the Cojuangcos of misspending over P569-million in tobacco excise tax shares from 2010 to 2012.

Members of the North and Central Luzon Tobacco Farmers Association, Inc., represented by Ruben Lagmay, president, and Virginia Salta, filed the complaint-affidavit against Cojuangco  for alleged violation of Republic Act 7080 (Law on Plunder), Republic Act No. 3019 (Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Law) and Republic Act No. 6713, otherwise known as the “Code of Conduct and Ethical Standard for Public Officials and employees).

Lagmay and Salta accused the Cojuangco couple of “conspiring to defraud the tobacco farmers of the proceeds of the tobacco excise tax by taking undue advantage of their official position, authority, connection and influence.”

“We have the right to know where the money intended to benefit us was spent,” Lagmay said in a talk to the media  after filing the complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman in Quezon City.

The complainants alleged that of the Cojuangco’s P569-million tobacco excise tax shares, P503.7 million were appropriated for farm-to-market roads, palay and corn drying facility, repair and construction of small bridges, solar dryers, irrigation canals and purchase of farm equipment, among others, in the towns of Alcala, Sto. Tomas, Sison and Villasis.

In the affidavit submitted to the Ombudsman, complainants said most of the projects transacted by the Cojuangcos from their shares from tobacco excise tax were in violation of the tax excise law.

The law on tobacco excise tax mandates that congressmen get an 80 percent share and 10 percent share for governors and mayors.

Under the law, projects allowed to be funded by tobacco excise tax shares are those engaged by farmers cooperatives that will enhance better quality of agricultural products and increase productivity and income of farmers.

Also qualified for funding are livelihood projects, particularly the development of alternative farming system to enhance farmers’ income, and agro-industrial initiatives that will enable tobacco farmers to manage or own business ventures like cigarette manufacturing and by-product utilization.

The farmers group cited the almost P1 billion sourced from the excise tax shares in native and burley tobacco-growing, spent by the Cojuangcos in putting up the first dairy farm project in the Ilocos region in Laoac town.

The milk farm, awarded to a cooperative which the former solon helped organize, closed shop recently after only over a year of operation.

It was in 2009 when then Rep. Cojuangco, as chairman of the Congressional Oversight Committee on Comprehensive Tax Reform Program, sponsored the measure that empowered members of the House of Representatives to propose “relevant projects” in tobacco-producing towns in their respective congressional districts to be funded by the tobacco excise tax shares.

Cojuangco was also allegedly behind the monetization scheme of the tobacco excise tax shares to allow beneficiaries to withdraw and use the fund instead of waiting for annual schedule of releases by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM). (Leonardo Micua)

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