FORMER Metro Rail Transit 3 general manager Al Vitangcol III asked the Sandiganbayan on Thursday to assign a public attorney to defend him from the corruption charges that the government filed against him over the controversial MRT-3 maintenance contract.
At the same time, Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya maintained that he did nothing wrong in negotiating a separate P3.8-billion maintenance contract that was given to a Korean-Filipino consortium after Vitangcol was removed from office.
But the group that sued Abaya asked the Ombudsman to suspend the officials accused of wrong-doing with the Korean-Filipino group so that they will not be able to use their positions to influence witnesses or manipulate evidence.
Vitangcol had earlier blamed Abaya for the contracts, but he said no competent lawyer wants to defend him from from charges that he was purportedly behind the controversial multimillion-dollar contract to maintain the MRT-3 line in 2012 and 2013 because he could not pay the fees of competent law firms.
“The institution of this instant case, together with the seemingly biased press releases of the Office of the Ombudsman, had effectively ruined [my] reputation and integrity,” Vitangcol, who is himself a lawyer, told the anti-graft court in a pleading.
Even the hold-departure orders issued against him “restricted his geographical mobility, effectively stopping the business opportunities he was recently working on,” Vitangcol said.
He claimed he has not been able to get new clients in the exercise of his legal profession and his earning capacity has been greatly diminished.
He said he had preliminary talks with “prominent” law firms, but the firms asked him to pay P1 million in cash as an acceptance fee plus other legal fees.
During his arraignment last week, Vitangcol appeared in court without a lawyer and refused to enter a plea on charges that he had the contracts awarded to a consortium that included his relatives.
Also charged were Vitangcol’s uncle-in-law Arturo Soriano, the provincial accountant of Pangasinan; Wilson de Vera, a mayoralty bet under the Liberal Party in Calasiao, Pangasinan; Marlo de la Cruz; Manolo Maralit, and Federico Remo.
They were named respondents to the case as incorporators of Philippine Trans Rail Management and Services Corp. (PH Trams) that bagged the MRT-3 interim maintenance deal worth $1.15 million a month without the conduct of a public bidding on Oct. 20, 2012.
The charges against Abaya for the maintenance contract that was also negotiated after Vitangcol left office was similar to that of PH Trams, but Abaya insisted that it was all aboveboard.
“We have nothing to fear because we maintain that the procurement process of the three-year Metro Rail Transit Line 3 (MRT-3) maintenance service provider was completely aboveboard,” Abaya said in a statement.
Abaya together with three top officials of the Department of Transportation and Communications were charged with graft before the Ombudsman last week by Vito Gaspar Silo, secretary general of the Alliance for Consumerism and Transparency.
The charges arose from alleged anomalous award of a P3.8 billion contract to maintain the train system for three years, and conduct a general overhaul of the rail line’s 43 trains and the total replacement of the line’s signaling systems to a joint venture group on Dec. 23, 2015.
In the group’s complaint, Silo said DoTC and MRT3 committed violations of the procurement law, which mandates a public bidding.
He said DoTC added scope of work in the “emergency” negotiated procurement, particularly the general overhaul of the 43 trains and the replacement of the signaling systems, even though these were not included in the two failed public biddings.
In his request to the Government Procurement Policy Board last year, Abaya cited the “immediate need” for a three-year maintenance provider to upgrade “worn-out facilities” and address other existing problems that haunt the congested railway system, “as well as the general overhaul of train coaches and the replacement of the signalling system.”
The complaint said the inclusion of the additional scopes of work necessitated the increase of the appropriated budget from P2.25 billion in the first failed bidding and P2.39 billion in the second bidding.
The budget even rose to P4.25 billion when the negotiating team started procurement on Sept. 1, 2015.