SENATOR Antonio Trillanes IV filed on Thursday a plunder complaint against presidential bet Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte before the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with the hiring of 11,000 ghost employees in 2014.
In a nine-page complaint-affidavit, Trillanes said he based his allegations on a Commission on Audit report in 2015 questioning the recruitment of 11,000 contractual workers that cost the Davao City government some P708 million in 2014.
The Duterte camp called Trillanes a congenital liar and a publicity hound.
“No ghost employees, just ghost accusations,” said PDP-Laban spokeswoman Paola Alvarez.
Apart from plunder, Duterte should also be held liable for malversation of public funds and graft for “unlawful activities” or “predicate crimes” as provided for in the Anti-Money Laundering Act, or Republic Act 9160 for alleged hidden peso and dollar accounts at the BPI-Julia Vargas branch, Trillanes said.
Duterte has better things to do than to dignify the unfounded allegations of Trillanes, Alvarez said.
“This is an old issue that Mayor Duterte has already explained [that the charges are] without any basis. The city government hired various employees and assigned them to different agencies for a certain period of time. They were contractual employees that the city government accommodated to give them temporary employment,” she said.
“If CoA found the hiring of contractual employees irregular, then it would have already filed a case against Duterte. But there’s none, so what is Trillanes talking about? He is a congenital liar and a publicity hound,” Duterte’s lawyer Salvador Panelo said in a statement.
She also asked Trillanes why his driver and household help were on the list of his Senate consultants, and noted that he spent the largest amount of pork barrel even when he was in jail for rebellion.
“He should explain who are the ghost recipients of pork barrel funds,” she added.
“It appears that Senator Trillanes now only wants to throw allegations left and right so he will still be in the public eye since he is the perennial cellar-dweller in all surveys. We are not bothered by the scurrilous allegations of Senator Trillanes who is a vicious attack dog unleashed by Malacañang to derail Mayor Duterte’s presidential bid.”
Amid criticisms, Duterte remained the frontrunner in several opinion surveys.
“We thank our supporters that despite all the bases allegations thrown at us, we are still getting warm support from all sectors throughout the country. The bandwagon of change is unstoppable,” Alvarez said.
Another Duterte spokesman, Peter Laviña, said it was Malacañang with its scare tactics, and not the mayor, who was causing jitters in the market.
“Instead of presenting its platform, the ruling party has engaged attacks dogs, such as Senator Antonio Trillanes, to throw piecemeal accusations against Duterte meant to pull his high ratings down in the preelection surveys,” he said.
In a statement, Laviña said the “media is lapping at the circus with glee without regard to its negative effect on the financial market.”
“The baseless accusation that Duterte has hidden wealth in a leading bank and not reported in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth proved to be a dud. No less than the bank issued the denial,” he said.