Bersamin, Panganiban liable for obeying illegal order

Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin and Agriculture Senior Usec. Domingo Panganiban can be indicted for repeated graft. Under oath at the Senate, they said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. instructed them to import 440,000 tons of sugar via select traders. No open bidding.

That was an illegal order. In obeying it, Bersamin and Panganiban broke the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. They favored with multibillion-pesos three traders with whom they and Marcos Jr. met at Malacañang. Dozens of others were disfavored, another act of graft.

It was, as Senator Risa Hontiveros denounced, “state-sponsored smuggling.” They can be charged with economic sabotage under the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Law.

Result of their acts: sugar retails so costly today.

R.A. 3019, Section 3, specifies “corrupt practices of public officers”:

“(a) Persuading, inducing or influencing another public officer to perform an act constituting a violation of rules and regulations duly promulgated by competent authority or an offense in connection with the official duties of the latter, or allowing himself to be persuaded, induced, or influenced to commit such violation or offense.”

The selection criteria for the three traders – from a three page list of over a hundred – was secret. The Sugar Regulatory Administration should have done it by public bidding. To avert price cartels, SRA usually chooses a dozen or so traders.

Panganiban allocated 240,000 tons to the first trader, which Hontiveros revealed has a history of smuggling. The second got 100,000 tons, which its auditors reported to be undercapitalized by $398,103 (P19.7 million) in 2021. The last 100,000 tons went to a lightweight that doesn’t have a company website.

Panganiban waived the requisite hundred-million-peso performance bond each must post to guarantee completion of imports. That broke SRA policy and practice.

The three bought sugar from Thailand. Landed cost is P25,000 per ton. They sell at P85,000. At P60,000 markup per ton, they will profit P26.4 billion from 440,000 tons.

Violated was Section 3(e): “Causing any undue injury to any party, including the Government, or giving any private party any unwarranted benefits, advantage or preference in the discharge of his official administrative or judicial functions through manifest partiality, evident bad faith or gross inexcusable negligence.”

Through SRA, Panganiban made Customs release previously seized smuggled sugar of the first trader. Another breach of Sections 3(a) and (e). The second trader also brought in multimillion-peso unauthorized shipment.

One million pesos in agricultural smuggling is economic sabotage – nonbailable, life imprisonment.

Bersamin was once Chief Justice. Panganiban was a 30-year agriculture bureaucrat before resurrection as senior usec. They should’ve advised Marcos Jr., concurrent Agriculture Secretary and SRA chairman, to grant import privileges strictly by public bidding.

Bersamin and Panganiban denied wrongdoing. Hontiveros noted, however, that the three allocatees were awarded before SRA’s issuance of Sugar Order No. 6.

Last year, Hontiveros recalled, Marcos Jr. fired Vic Rodriguez as executive secretary for authorizing imports without presidential signature as SRA chairman. “This time they committed worse,” she said.

Bersamin countered that there are three other ways to import sugar aside from SRA order. Those are by minimum access volume (MAV) under the World Trade Organization, by presidential directive, and by emergency procurement.

But MAV imports also go through open bidding. Presidential imports are done by government-owned Philippine International Trading Corp., which also publicly bids out allocations. No disaster warranted emergency imports.

SRA Sugar Order No. 6, Feb. 15, 2023, belatedly legitimized the favored traders’ contraband. Yet Malacañang declared as smuggled and thus saleable at Kadiwa rolling stores 9,827 tons of sugar confiscated from 21 other traders between Nov. 12, 2022 and Mar. 15, 2023. That again infracts Section 3(e).

Malacañang claimed that the three traders’ P85-per-kilo selling price was cheap, since sugar was then retailing at P100-P130 per kilo.

Conveniently downplayed was that, before the scam, sugar was only P70 at the start of Marcos Jr.’s tenure. Before then, only P40.

Industrial users begged Panganiban to be allowed to import sweeteners on their own at much lower rates. Nixing their plea, Malacañang told them to transact only with the three select traders, Hontiveros bared. Again, defiance of Section 3(e).

Marcos Jr. too is liable for corruption and economic sabotage. But, by faulty constitutional interpretation, he can be indicted only after term’s end in 2028. Impeachment is unlikely. Marcos Jr.’s cousins, son and minions control the House and Senate supermajorities.

For now, the Ombudsman must uphold the law against Marcos Jr.’s subalterns. That will teach them that presidential directives cannot right a wrong.