Newly-appointed Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office board member Sandra Cam is “being used as a pawn” to control the nationwide numbers game in favor of the illegal gambling operations of her longtime friend, Charlie “Atong” Ang, a top official of the agency said Saturday.
Describing Cam as a “loose cannon,” PCSO general manager Alexander Balutan lambasted her use of the agency’s employees Christmas gathering to throw unfounded allegations against him and PCSO chairman Jose Jorge Corpuz.
This, he said, would clear the way for Ang’s Meridien Vista Gaming Corp. to supplant the government’s Small Town Lottery, the only legal numbers game in the country and created to counter the illegal but popular “jueteng” game.
“Her ultimate goal is to replace me or the chairman and usher in her longtime friend Atong Ang into the PCSO systems to control STL nationwide,” Balutan said in a statement.
If Cam thinks there was something irregular about the agency’s Christmas Party, the GM said she should have gone to court and not gone talking to the media.
“If she thinks and has evidence to show that we’re corrupt, then file a case in court, not ruin the reputation of the person she wants to attack through the media. She is now a member of the board and she should act like one. Be professional,” he said.
Shortly after he and Corpuz entered PCSO last year, Balutan claimed that Cam accompanied Ang, a reputed jueteng financier to his office, with Ang offering him P200 million in monthly remittances if the agency would allow him to handle the STL operation nationwide.
“I immediately rejected Ang’s offer and told him and Cam I cannot allow a notorious gambling lord like him to meddle in the affairs of PCSO. I told them President Duterte doesn’t like a gambling lord to lord over PCSO’s lottery games,” Balutan said.
Sources close to the PCSO leadership said they have the goods against Cam and her purported links to Ang, whose operation is the main competition against the government’s expanded STL game.
Ang made headlines last May after he accused some retired military and police generals, including National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. and Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre, of plotting to kill him, while claiming they were taking kickbacks from the STL operations.
Esperon and Aguirre have dismissed the allegation as a ‘tall tale’ and said Ang’s impunity on illegal gambling “will be killed” and not him.
Cam, the former whistleblower, had lashed out against her fellow PCSO officials and accused Corpuz, Balutan and other members of the board—former Quezon City congressman Bong Suntay and former Davao City village chief Marlon Balite—for having a “lavish Christmas party” at the Edsa Shangri-La Hotel where the agency spent more than P10 million.
She likewise peddled alleged board documents not yet approved and authorized by the board as a collegial body, Balutan said.
Saying Cam “is now creating havoc at PCSO,” Balutan scored the official for peddling lies about the agency’s Christmas Party, when only P6.5 million was spent.
Corpuz, for his part, said PCSO’s over 1,580 employees and their families “deserved” the fellowship at Shangri-La after a year of hard work.
Corpuz said Cam’s statements cannot hide the achievements of PCSO “now being enjoyed by the Filipino people,” specially the indigent who need medical assistance under the Duterte government.
“We might be hitting up to P51 billion or it could be more this year as compared to only more than P37 billion in 2016. It’s all because we intensified our President’s battle against illegal numbers game. And I think that is one thing, particularly the STL, Sandra Cam wants to destroy in favor of a notorious gambling lord,” he said.
He and Balutan said they are open to any investigation, and disputed Cam’s allegations of corruption in PCSO.
“PCSO’s growth is historic high today under the new leadership,” Balutan said.
The GM warned her not to destroy the agency before President Rodrigo Duterte to grab power.
“I do not want to go down to her level. She is a loose cannon,” he said.
“True to what I said earlier, ‘Don’t bite the hands that feed you.’ She is destroying PCSO under the Office of the President, which she now belongs, which we have been painstakingly building its credibility since day one last year,” Balutan said.