Is WB report a corruption index?
There is more than meets the eyes in the controversial WB report reduced as it is now as the butt of contention in congressional hearings of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The media bureau of Malacanang has cast a lot of shadows on the issue as PR handlers took turns to view it in various lights. And one has even as much as doubt the very existence of a WB report and if that were not a rather strange idea, I don’t know what is.
Now, Malou Mangahas of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and former editor of the Philippine Collegian of UP, has written a report in Manila Times, entitled “WB report mixes facts with rumors” which outlines the cause and effect of the bid-rigging report. It has become of no moment if Philippine courts can use the report to go after public officials who appear to be involved in graft and corruption on said WB-funded road projects. Suffice to say, that the WB report has the long and the short of it as to enable one to actually – separate the grain from the chaff – matter-of-factly.
Off-repeatedly interviewed, the First Gentleman cannot but just dismiss as hearsay all this hullabaloo. An implicated congressman first echoed the same rebuff now embraced as the official line by calling it all but tsismis (rumors). That gives them a little bit of a grip in the showbiz world but what about their hands being seen in the cookie jar, in a manner of speaking?
Given its present composition, any average mind will not think that the WB staff in their Development of Institutional Integrity unit went through their investigation with neither competence nor integrity. Mr. Kramer is a special attorney in the Criminal Division, Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the US Department of Justice. Further, Mr. Hawkes is senior officer of the INT who is expert in anti-money laundering and forensic auditing of fraud and corruption in bank-funded projects. Mr. Dushenaliyev and others are financial specialists at the World Bank. In short, it is hard to debunk the report they had come up with as under the category of either – rumor or hearsay. Nor is it to be lacking in any evidentiary value as that runs away from the truth.
At bottom, we see that these alleged collusive practices and overpriced WB-funded projects have been a two-year work with interviews conducted to some 60 individuals. While it may be observed that the stories are invariably – first, second, or third-hand accounts – still, any well-meaning investigator can get the requirement of probative value in a 230-page document on the Notice of Sanctions proceedings alone. But fact is, from the outline, there exists a case of rigging and collusion between and among contractors, bureaucrats and politicians who conspire in order to draw fat commissions or kickbacks from contracts.
With a corpus of data, whether or not, they could be woven together as factual and scientific, the WB considers the nature of its investigative proceedings as merely administrative rather than criminal or judicial. And perhaps, due to the nature of how various accounts and stories may have been gathered or collected, WB deems it proper to classify the report as ‘strictly confidential’. But long running interviews coupled with emails flowing in and out of a communication channel provided enough ‘body of truths’ in an otherwise mix of identified and anonymous email senders. But when one email sender has as much as predicted the outcome of the bidding – this in itself – provides a fairly reliable source of information that cannot just be swept in the dustbin.
It has also been said that there was actually a process as would allow bidders to refute the allegations within three months, that is, without having to confront the adverse witnesses against them. But since 54 out of 60 interviewed were in fact named, a marginal number opted to go anonymous and still, the end result does not change picture at all. Thus, there seems to be no further obstacle for the WB to issue sanctions as it did issue to four Chinese companies and three Filipino companies, one of which is owned by a congressman.
Perhaps, the WB report is best seen as a form of audit to check whether or not certain fraudulent practices attend the proceedings in bidding and awarding of WB-funded projects based on best available evidence as the infrastructure upon which it can build its proof. On whether such findings contain sufficient enough evidence in any court of law ought to be a matter for the prosecution. In this light, Sen. Ping Lacson has been taken to task.
It is truly ironic to know that one bidder does not disclose his lawful taxable income so that he can accommodate the requests from some politicians and officials presumably from the DPWH. It may however be interesting to note that one former Prime Minister Virata had earlier conducted a review if investigation on bid-rigging as well as overpricing in foreign-assisted or funded national road projects. And the findings but confirm the WB report.
Such findings show that the lack of competition in biddings for road-building contracts opened an environment conducive for collusion among few bidders wherein the implementing agency, in this case, the DPWH will have to pay for higher costs for programs of works when it should not. The Virata 2007 study confirms the fact that some contractors are deliberately being precluded or pre-disqualified from bidding thus betraying the role of bidding to secure the most advantageous proposal in favor of the government.
What the WB report wants us to see is that even those money being loaned by foreign-funding institutions such as the WB, among others, are not immune or free from every form of corruption that in the end, is advantageous only to a few – at the expense of the state whose interests ought to be served best.
The WB report may have to be viewed as one perceivable in our anti-corruption radar screen and therefore should be confronted promptly enough if the official campaign against corruption enjoys any kind of moral integrity. Absent such an urge, by either the Ombudsman or the finance department, then not much can result from it. The Senate remains to be the more independent watchdog against corruption for now and Sen. Ping Lacson seems committed to fill the void – despite the bureaucratic denial syndrome still very much in vogue today. It is hoped, new legislative measures will be proposed to curb corruption.