Mendoza's testimony on the Garcia plunder case

Heidi Mendoza of COA

AS we go deeper into the Carlos Garcia plunder case, we are beginning to see a web of conspiracy reaching as far as the Commission on Audit (COA) which initially fielded a large team of accountants, only to fold up later when the case against Garcia got stronger. In an interview with ABS-CBN, COA auditor Heidi Mendoza says she resigned from her career after she could not swallow what they were telling her to do – stop gathering evidence against Garcia. This after Ombudsman lawyer Simeon Marcelo, the guy who asked her to help him, resigned for “health reasons.”

But the 20-year veteran of COA Mendoza says she is still willing to serve as witness in the Garcia plunder case if they call her to testify in court. This means top people at COA have been involved. Part of Garcia’s loot went to them because how come senior management of COA "blatantly refused" her request to continue her investigation?

In her testimony, Mendoza said she unearthed a suspicious transfer of funds from the AFP’s Land Bank account to a private bank. Which bank she did not say. The payee was the AFP Inter-Agency Trust Fund, involving P200 million. This happened on November 28, 2002.
In that private bank, ”it was made to appear that the amount was deposited in only one account. However, the account had two passbooks, one which showed a deposit of P100 million, and the other, P50 million.” The P50 million entry was not however machine-validated but only typewritten. And what happened to the other P50 million? In that transaction, P100 million was lost.

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Moreover, the inter-agency account in the private bank “was not booked,” and, hence, “the transfer of cash was not reflected in the AFP’s books of accounts,” Mendoza said.
Mendoza also disclosed that after Marcelo left government service, she was asked to return case documents to the offices she took them from.

Now prosecutors are saying there is not enough evidence to convict Garcia. Following the conspiracy theory, they, too, could be part of the dressing down of Garcia’s case, which allowed him to post bail.

Refuting the prosecutors who claim that the funds are intact, Mendoza says that while prosecutors said the funds have been accounted, "they did not say that no funds are missing." This does not mean that graft did not take place, she said.

"They said that funds have been accounted, for it is just due to late recording. Come on! Everyone who practices accounting knows that --and I can testify on this--if there's a late recording, it's basically a condition that bridges opportunity for misappropriation. This is what exactly I’m saying," she explained.

The delay is not one month or six months but two years. “You’re doing a bank reconciliation after 2 years! This means you are also opening the books to misappropriation, it is subject to fraud,“ asserts Mendoza.

Well, I guess we’ll be having long, drawn-out war against corruption in this Garcia case. And we’re facing a Mafia-like conspiracy here. Carry on, Heidi. We’re right behind you.

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