_THE LAST STRAW
173. Thirteen years – that’s how long I had been in the employ of the Lagayan municipality. All that time, I endured so many indignities and so much humiliation under the Lunas. But I always prayed that the Lunas would finally see the light and treat the municipal hall employees with respect. But everyone knew my vocal opposition to the continued failure by the Lunas to pay the municipal hall employees according to what the law provides.
174. It is perhaps because of this reason that when one day in the first week of May, someone sent a Resolution purportedly issued by the Sangguniang Bayan to the Secretary of Finance, with copy furnished to the Regional Director of the Bureau of Local Government Finance, asking the immediate transfer of our municipal treasurer, Mrs. Marissa G. Donato, and the appointment of a new treasurer from the regional office, the Lunas immediately pinpointed me as the culprit. The resolution carried all the necessary but apparently forged, signatures, including mine. Its reason for calling for a replacement for Mrs. Donato was betrayal of public trust and graft and corruption.
_HOW PUBLIC FUNDS ARE CONTROLLED BY THE LUNAS
134. Everytime Jendricks would do a project I would remind him and the treasurer that such a project always required legislative approval, since his proposed project was not part of Lagayan’s Annual Investment Plan (AIP) as well as its Medium Development Plan. Too, I would remind them that any project whose cost exceeds P50,000.00 requires a public bidding, pursuant to the new Government Procurement Act, RA 9184. I know this to be a fact as vice chair of the Municipal Bids and Awards Committee (BAC).
135. But he would have none of it; he’d insist on something that would allow him to immediately cash out on the project.
_The whimsicality of Lagayan politics
1. The 2010 elections came. We now have a new mayor – an 82 or 78-year old woman, depending on who’s saying what her age is. Here’s how it happened.
2. Cecilia Luna was now running for re-election to the House of Representatives. Jendricks was also up for re-election as mayor. His brother Cromwell, a resident of Bangued, Abra and a registered voter there, decided to transfer residency in Tineg so he could run for mayor there. Transferring of voter’s records for them is very easy as even local authorities in Abra are afraid of them because they are in power. Meanwhile in Bangued his brother Ryan was candidate for mayor too and in the town of Villaviciosa, Leonidas Seareas, Jr., Cecilia’s brother, was candidate for vice mayor.
_When my work as Lagayan’s MPDO began
27. I started working as Lagayan’s Municipal Planning and Development Officer in August 3, 1998 under then Mayor Cecilia Seares Luna. My parents, who were her political supporters, lobbied hard so I could land the job. Not that I had little faith in my own qualifications: I am a college graduate, with a degree in Business Administration which I earned in 1988 from the Divine Word College in Bangued, Abra.
11. I also file a separate graft and corruption charge against incumbent 82-year old mayor Purificacion B. Paingan, for grave misconduct, dereliction of duty and gross negligence for allowing Jendricks S. Luna to take over the helm of the municipality and continue his plunder of the town coffers, this time, as a barangay captain who chairs the town’s Association of Barangay Captains (ABC). Mayor Paingan is a distant cousin of Cecilia Seareas Luna’s mother.
12. At the very least, Mayor Paingan is guilty of violating Art. 217 of the Revised Penal Code, which penalizes and defines technical malversation. Under the said provision of law, “[a]ny public officer who, by reason of the duties of his office, is accountable for public funds or property, shall appropriate the same or shall take or misappropriate or shall consent, through abandonment or negligence, shall permit any other person to take such public funds, or property, wholly or partially, or shall otherwise be guilty of the misappropriation or malversation of such funds or property.”
Office of the Ombudsman
Republic of the Philippines
Ombudsman Building
Agham Road Quezon City 1101
Bernadine S. Joson,
Complainant, Case No._____________________
For: Plunder, Graft and Corruption, technical malversation, unethical conduct, violation of the Government Procurement Reform Act (RA 9184) and Forfeiture.
- versus-
Cecilia seareas Luna, Jendricks Seares luna, Lara Haya Seares Luna, Purificacion Blaza paingan, Marissa G. Donato, Meno C. Dickenson and Osborne P. Dolaoen,
Respondents.
x--------------------------------------------------x
Complaint-Affidavit
I, Bernadine S. Joson, of legal age, married, until recently Municipal Planning and Development Coordinator and concurrent Secretary to the Sangguniang Bayan of the Municipality of Lagayan, Abra, with address for purposes of this complaint at Roque and Butuyan Law Offices, Unit 1904 Antel 2000 Corporate Center, 121 Valero Street, Salcedo Village, Makati City 1277, hereby depose and state that:
 The Lunas of Abra By Luz Rimban, VERA Files
Two prominent members of a powerful political family in Abra are facing
plunder charges for allegedly embezzling more than P130 million in municipal
funds, in what a whistleblower has called "big-time corruption in a small town."
Named in a complaint-affidavit are former Abra congresswoman Cecilia
Seares-Luna and her eldest son Jendricks. Cecilia served as mayor of Lagayan
town from 1998 to 2007, when she ran for Abra's lone congressional seat.
Jendricks succeeded her as mayor in 2007, ran for barangay captain in October 2010 and is now president of Lagayan's Association of Barangay Captains.
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