Sins of the father

Civil forfeiture is supposed to be easier than securing a criminal conviction. Confiscating ill-gotten assets in the still widening infrastructure corruption mess is seen as one of the low-hanging fruits in assuaging public outrage.

- ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN

The Independent Commission for Infrastructure is working with several agencies to hasten such forfeiture proceedings. Assets of several of those implicated in the scandal have been frozen.

Those behind the efforts must ensure that any adult children used in the thievery must also suffer the consequences.

The forfeiture must be genuine and thorough instead of what we have seen in the past years, which was often token and allowed thieves to keep a considerable amount of ill-gotten wealth.

A case in point is that of retired military comptroller Carlos Flores Garcia. The former Army major general was accused of pocketing P303 million from 1993 to 2005. But under a plea bargain agreement he struck with the Office of the State Prosecutor, the original plunder complaint against him was downgraded to direct bribery and facilitating money laundering.

In exchange, he surrendered P135,433,387.84 in various assets to the state, and was freed on P60,000 bail on Dec. 16, 2010, just in time for the Christmas holidays.

Also as part of the plea bargain, Garcia’s accused co-conspirators — his wife Clarita and adult sons Ian Carl, Juan Paulo and Timothy Mark - were dropped from the case.

Garcia's woes started when Clarita, in an attempt to save her sons from a criminal indictment for failing to declare $100,000 upon entry to the US, had blabbed to US customs authorities that there was more where the cash came from, since her husband was the comptroller of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Former state auditor Heidi Mendoza presented bank documents to back up the detailed findings of a six-member team of the Commission on Audit (COA) that plunder was committed by Garcia. Yet the plea bargain was endorsed by then special prosecutor Wendell Sulit ostensibly because the evidence was insufficient to prove plunder.