THE Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption has filed graft charges against Pampanga’s Magalang Mayor Maria Lourdes Lacson and Vice Mayor Norman Lacson before the Office of the Ombudsman over a P7-million pork scam.
At a media briefing at the Ombudsman central office, Pyra Lucas, a VACC-Pampanga chapter coordinator, challenged the inaction in the first graft raps filed against the mayor and other local officials in January.
“I am filing the suit to include the vice mayor’s culpability,” she told Ombudsman reporters after a meeting with VACC founding chairman Dante Jimenez at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
She questioned why the vice mayor was never charged in any complaint filed by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.
In a 12-page complaint, she said both Lacsons violated Republic Act 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act and RA 6713 or the Code of Conduct And Unethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees.
The other local officials—treasurer Raissa Bayani, assessor Adela Tanhueco, engineer Jesus Nathaniel Pili, business permit and licensing chief Ryan Miranda, agriculturist Milagros Suing and barangay chairman Marcial Alfaro—were included in the charge sheet.
Lucas said the respondents also committed gross misconduct.
The Magalang mayor committed a wrongdoing for selling 4,038 hogs for P7 million to Bacolor Mayor Jose Maria Hizon, son of prominent businesswoman Lolita Hizon of Pampanga’s Best processed meat products, without any legal basis or court disposition in 2016, she added.
Last January, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-National Capital Region director Wilkins Villanueva filed graft raps against Mayor Lacson, Hizon and the other Magalang municipal officials, except the vice mayor.
The pigs were owned by private individuals, and not the municipality of Magalang, PDEA insisted.
Lucas accused the two Lacsons of having profited from the “measly” sale transaction of the 4,038 hogs seized from Jeowang Farm in Barangay San Ildefonso, Magalang town.
On Sept. 7, 2016, PDEA and the PNP raided the Jewong piggery farm in Magalang, where an underground shabu laboratory was found and seven Chinese personalities were arrested.