Press Release
September 27, 2021

Dispatch from Crame No. 1152:
Sen. Leila M. de Lima on the PS-DBM's and Pharmally's Public-Private Partnership for Plunder

We in the Senate are already beyond the smoking gun in the Pharmally hearings. The Blue-Ribbon Committee led by Sen. Gordon already has way more than a smoking gun to pin the culprits down to the very bowels of the earth.

After the admission of a Pharmally executive that they faked the expiration dates on face shields, and after the PS-DBM got caught tampering with the documents by deleting them from the virtual drive in the last hearing, the conspiracy between PS-DBM as led by former Usec Lao and Pharmally as led by Michael Yang as its benefactor is already established beyond reasonable doubt.

There is no longer escaping the inevitable conclusion that PS-DBM and Pharmally conspired to plunder more than 10 billion pesos of the people's money by keeping on paying billions to undercapitalized Pharmally and letting them deliver even without purchase orders and awarded contracts.

Under ordinary circumstances, of course, all these irregularities allowed to be committed in the PS-DBM's deals with Pharmally would not have transpired.

This sort of thing happens only in a conspiracy, when top government officials connive with the contractor to create a public-private sector partnership for the plunder of government coffers which undoubtedly goes all the way up to Malacañang. That is why the lawyer for Usec Lao, Michael Yang and the Pharmally executives is none other than President Duterte. He will not do this if he was not at the top of the chain of conspiracy.

It is now high time for the Ombudsman to start its preliminary investigation, at least of PS-DBM officials as led by Lao and Pharmally as led by Yang. There is no question about that. The Ombudsman should now go beyond hiding the President's SALN from the people and for a change, start investigating him and his gang of thieves. Kahit ngayon lang sa pagkakataon na ito, sana naman kumampi si Ombudsman Martires sa panig ng taumbayan. Huwag naman sanang puro lamang pagprotekta sa SALN ni Duterte ang kanyang inaatupag.

The Pharmally investigation has gone this far for us to discover that the crime did not only result in figuratively killing the people by way of plundering public funds during a pandemic, but also literally when expired face shields were delivered for the use of our healthcare workers. Ilan kaya ang namatay sa COVID na mga nars, duktor, at iba pang nagtatrabaho sa mga ospital dahil sa mga depektibong kagamitan na binenta ng ulupong na Pharmally sa mga ahas sa PS-DBM?

We should not stop until all those responsible for this plunder which cost lives are brought to justice. If only for this one time, we should not falter in seeking merciless retribution against these sociopaths at the PS-DBM and Pharmally who stole from our countrymen and killed our healthcare workers in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

(Access the handwritten version, here: https://issuu.com/senatorleilam.delima/docs/dispatch_1152_5683d7ef45cfc7)

News Latest News Feed