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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Justice head vouches for embattled SolGen

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Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra on Tuesday gave his “vote of confidence” to Solicitor General Jose Calida and defended him from the allegations of conflict of interest as a result of the contract of his family’s security agency with the Justice department.

Guevarra said there was nothing irregular with his department’s contract with Calida’s Vigilant Investigative and Security Agency Inc., which became the basis of a complaint filed before the Office of the Ombudsman.

“It’s a private security agency, not the OSG [Office of the Solicitor General] or the SolGen who entered into the contracts with the DoJ,” Guevarra said. 

“Let’s presume that the contracts were validly entered into unless it could be shown that it violated the procurement law.

“From the viewpoint of the DoJ, what is important is that all procurement laws, rules, and regulations were observed when it entered into these contracts.”

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Guevarra said there was no need to order an internal inquiry on the matter “unless there’s a challenge to the validity of the contracts.”

He made his statement after opposition senators demanded Calida’s resignation over the P150-million contracts bagged by VISAI in at least 10 government agencies including the Justice department.

Apart from DoJ, Calida’s security agency also bagged contracts with the National Parks Development Committee, the National Anti-Poverty Commission, the National Economic and Development Authority and Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp.

Calida said he did not violate R.A. 6713 after resigning from his post as president and chairman of VISAI before to his appointment as Solicitor General in 2016.

But he said he had not divested his 60-percent share in the family business.

“To reiterate, the Office of the Solicitor General is not the approving authority for the subject contracts, which were all obtained through public bidding in accordance with the law. Neither is the OSG in the business of licensing, regulating or supervising security agencies such as Vigilant,” Calida said.

He said his company did not earn P150 million from the contracts as insinuated in the media, saying “only a small percentage is left as agency fee” as the bulk of the payments went to the salaries of guards and mandatory contributions to the Social Security System and Pag-IBIG.

Malacañang had defended Calida earlier, believing that the allegations against him came from his enemies who were trying to get back at him after securing the ouster of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno from the Supreme Court.

The complaint against Calida was filed with the Ombudsman earlier this month by private citizen Jocelyn Acosta.

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