Swine program scandal manifests unrelenting, raging government corruption

The Kilusang Mayo Uno today condemned the recent P100 million arranger’s fee expose involving the controversial 2004 swine program of Quedancor and Land Bank of the Philippines. The P100 million arranger’s fee is in addition to the P14 million attorney’s fee.

Elmer Labog, KMU Chairperson, said, “Quedancor and Land Bank of the Philippines are both government-owned corporations. Quedancor applied for a P3-billion loan to the Land Bank for its swine project and other programs. Why is there a need to hire a private consulting company and spent an exorbitant P114 million for arranger’s and attorney’s fee just to consummate a loan between two government-controlled corporations? This is highly irregular and scandalous.

“The subject P100 million arranger’s fee is clearly a commission or tong-pats. ” added Labog.

The Senate has confronted Quedancor officials on how it disbursed the P1.7-billion loan for the GMA CARES swine project. Opposition senators have expressed suspicion that the funds were used for administration bets in the 2007 elections.

During the joint hearing of the Blue Ribbon and Agriculture and Food committees, Quedancor failed to explain to COA auditors why the company had unrecorded receivables representing some P747.8 million when it said it had received P1.67 billion in loans released for 2005. During the COA audit, Quedancor only recorded P 918.3 million in released loans.

Labog concluded, “We previously heard reports of ghost deliveries of swine to supposed beneficiaries and of ‘borrowers‘ denying having borrowed from Quedancor. Baboy na nga ang project, binababoy pa! Today, we are shocked to hear an anomalous P100-million arranger’s fee paid to a private entity just to make one public financial institution (Land Bank) extend loan to another public corporation (Quedancor).” ###