A former anti-fraud official of Philippine Health Insurance Corp., who has turned whistleblower, claims that the company's President and CEO Ricardo Morales had coddled an alleged "mafia" within the agency.
Speaking to ABS-CBN's Teleradyo, lawyer Thorrsson Montes Keith claimed that the high-ranking officials at the state-run health insurer disbursed large advance payments to "favored" hospitals.
"They were not afraid, and that was why I called them mafia untouchables,” Keith said.
"And that was why I said General Morales was protecting them, because why were they so bold?”
Keith made his statement even as two witnesses had already revealed the allegedly fraudulent schemes at PhilHealth to the inter-agency task force that President Rodrigo Duterte had ordered to investigate the alleged corruption at the state health insurance firm.
In a statement, Task Force PhilHealth said Saturday it had begun its inquiry into the P15 billion in questionable cash advances that PhilHealth released to some hospitals.
At the panel's initial hearing on Friday, two resource persons who requested anonymity bared the schemes allegedly used by PhilHealth officers and employees through the years, both at its main office and
regional offices, in collusion with some doctors, hospitals and even banks that served as remittance centers.
Keith, who resigned from his post in July after revealing "widespread corruption" at the agency, questioned the irregular disbursement of a P15-billion fund to hospitals for COVID-19-related expenses.
"They were no longer working; they were just giving away the money," he said.
The interim reimbursement mechanism or IRM allows PhilHealth to provide advance payments to hospitals attending to COVID-19 patients, but the Senate hearings found that the bulk of the amount had also been disbursed to dialysis centers and maternity clinics.
Keith said Morales issued a memorandum allowing the deferment of the liquidation of advance deposits, which could have converted the multi-billion-peso fund into some sort of "intelligence fund." Such fund was exempt from regular audit procedures.
However, when regional vice presidents flagged the allegedly illegal scheme, Keith said, the agency then released another memorandum saying the IRM could be "optional."
Keith also said the agency failed to pay withholding taxes on the advance deposits, which he said could have reached P300 million and as high as P1 billion.
"If they didn’t pay a withholding tax, that would have been a crime already. And if the money was that big, then it would have been considered plunder,” Keith said.
“If you put it all together, you would see that there was a criminal intent to steal the money of the government.”
During the Senate investigation into the alleged anomalies at the agency on Tuesday, the Commission on Audit said PhilHealth missed the 60-day deadline to liquidate the multi-billion-peso fund.
The agency has also been linked to several anomalies, such as the ghost dialysis scandal and the procurement of overpriced equipment.
In response to Keith's allegations, Morales denied coddling the alleged "mafia" in the agency.
"Ginagawa ko lang po ang tingin kong tama pero itinatanggi ko ho na ako ay coddler ng sindikato. Hindi ko ho kinikilala na mayroon hong sindikato sa loob. Mayroon hong gumagawa ng katiwalian sa loob, pero hindi ko ho alam kung ito ho ay sindikato o hindi," Morales had said in the first Senate hearing on Aug. 4.
Keith is among three PhilHealth officers that the Senate granted legislative immunity to speak more freely on the alleged corruption schemes within the state-run health insurance company.