FORMER Quezon City (QC) Mayor Herbert M. Bautista was found guilty of graft over a P32.1-million procurement deal with a local software company in 2019, the Philippine anti-graft court said on Monday.
In a 146-page decision, released on Jan. 20, the Sandiganbayan Special Seventh Division convicted Mr. Bautista and a former city administrator for the procurement of an online application system, Online Occupational Permitting Tracking System (OOPTS), which expedites processing of occupational permits.
Imprisonment of six to ten years and perpetual disqualification from public office were meted out by the court on the convicted officials.
But they won’t be ordered to pay back the P32.1-million involved in the deal as “it cannot be directed to be paid by either accused,” with the software company not a respondent to the case, a part of the ruling penned by Associate Justice Ma. Theresa Dolores C. Gomez-Estoesta.
The camp of Mr. Bautista said they are “deeply saddened” by the decision, maintaining that the former mayor is innocent, his legal counsel, Nilo T. Divina, told BusinessWorld in a Viber message.
We “assert that no act constituting the offense was committed. Notably, the vote was split 2-1, highlighting reasonable doubt,” he noted.
“Evidence presented in the trial confirmed the project was delivered and received by the Quezon City Government, with payment made by the succeeding administration. Mayor Bautista did not financially benefit from the project, and no harm or injury was incurred by the city or its people.”
Mr. Divina said they will file a motion for reconsideration, in the hopes that a thorough review of the evidence will affirm Mr. Bautista’s innocence.
The former mayor had denied any irregularities in the bidding procedure and implementation of the project, the ruling read in part. He had also denied conspiring with his co-accused to defraud the government.
Mr. Bautista sought the case’s dismissal last year, but the Sandiganbayan rejected it, saying the case deserved a full-blown trial after finding probable cause.
The case emerged in 2019 after an internal audit revealed that full payment was made to the contracted software company for OOPTS despite the incomplete delivery of the project.
“Complaints on the non-functionality of the OOPTS (Online Occupational Permitting Tracking System) spurred an internal audit which revealed that the delivery of the project was not complete; yet, full payment was made to the supplier,” the decision stated.
The former mayor had said he received no reports that the project was defective or incompletely delivered. He also argued that there were reports by the Quezon City government’s General Services Department (GSD) and Information Technology Development Department (ITDD) finding that the delivery of the system was in order.
The Court, however, said that there were “visible red flags” in the inspection reports of GSD and ITDD, which should have been noticed by Mr. Bautista and his co-accused. The report particularly lacked photos and manuals from the delivery inspected by the GSD, while the ITDD remarked the online application itself was not included.
“This notation should have been the brunt that should have cautioned one’s guard. An online system without the software application defied the very essence of the Project,” the ruling read.
The Sandiganbayan also noted that the OOPTS was launched in “late 2021 to early 2022,” almost three years after the payment’s release. “Payment was approved and released to [the software company] at the end of June 2019, in spite of numerous glitches, crashes, and non-functional features afflicting its application.”
The ex-mayor should have endorsed the project to his successor instead of rushing the payment, the anti-graft court said. – Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio
