AN official of Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corporation, who has admitted to senators that the company tampered with the expiration dates on face shields sold to the government, skipped the continuation yesterday of the Senate investigation on alleged irregularities surrounding the billion-peso contracts for pandemic supplies awarded by the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management.
Noel Quimbo, director general of the Blue Ribbon committee, informed the panel of the absence of Krizle Grace Mago.
“She is not here. She is missing,” Quimbo told the committee chair, Sen. Richard Gordon, during the 10th hearing. He said Mago did not inform the committee either by call or even email the reason for her absence.
Gordon then directed the Office of the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms to help locate Mago.
“Ms. Mago is a very material witness in this investigation. I think she knows a lot more, and she does a lot more for Pharmally,” said Gordon, who asked the NBI on Monday to help locate Mago who has made herself scarce after appearing before the panel on Friday last week.
Pharmally corporate treasurer and secretary Mohit Dargani told Gordon he does not know where Mago is, adding the last time he talked with Mago was last Saturday, day after she made the damaging testimony against the company.
Mago’s testimony, according to Sen. Risa Hontiveros, corroborated Friday’s testimony of a former Pharmally former warehouse staff member who told the Senate they were tasked to change the expiry dates of the face shields from 2020 to 2021.
Another Pharmally official, director Linconn Ong, who is under Senate detention, attended the hearing but made a formal request to skip the succeeding hearings.
Ong was ordered detained for being evasive and inconsistent in his answers to senators.
Ong’s lawyer Ferdinand Topacio also sent a letter dated September 29 to Gordon’s committee. However, minutes before the resumption of the inquiry, Topacio issued a statement saying his client was “being physically forced” to attend the hearing.
Ong earlier backed out of a tell-all session with the senators.
Senate Sergeant-at-Arms chief Rene Samonte said Ong can be forced to attend the hearing as he is a Senate detainee. He said when this was explained to Ong, he eventually decided to attend the hearing.
Meanwhile, the lawyer of Rose Nono Lin, treasurer of Pharmally Biological Corporation, informed the committee through a letter that she could not attend the hearing because she was brought to the hospital on Wednesday night “due to abdominal pains.”
“The attached result of the CT Scan reveal a possible mesenteric adenitis – an inflammation of lymph nodes in the abdomen,” the one-page letter from the Siguion Reyna, Montecillo & Ongsiako law firm said.
COA AUDIT
During the hearing, Commission on Audit chairman Michael Aguinaldo said the agency has started a special audit on the transactions entered into by the PS-DBM, and it may be completed before the year ends.
He said a special audit usually takes 45 days to finish but that the team may need additional time for a deeper analysis of the PS-DBM deals.
He said the team would include the documents and other pieces of evidences submitted and uncovered during the investigation on the Pharmally issue.
Sen. Francis Pangilinan hit former PS-DBM chief Lloyd Christopher Lao for “smirking” at one point during the hearing while being questioned over the allegedly overpriced medical supplies.
Lao told Pangilinan he was not smirking but smiling because he found the questions “humorous.” He said the government through the PS-DBM bought the items, including the COVID-19 testing kits, out of need amid the rising COVID-19 cases and the death toll.
“And how do you explain half-a-billion pesos worth of testing kits expired under your watch? This is not funny,” Pangilinan told Lao as he insisted the items were substandard.
It was the PS-DBM under Lao that awarded the multi-billion-peso contracts last year to Pharmally which had a paid-up capital of only P625,000.
Lao defended the deal. “We need to remember during this time that there was a clamor from the Senate, and in fact a clamor from the medical field, that they will stop reporting to the hospitals if they will not be provided with these important PPE (personal protective equipment) items,” he said.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson echoed the points raised by his colleagues, saying that while Lao maybe correct in citing the need to expedite the purchases of the supplies considering the pandemic, there is still “no due diligence” on his part.
Lacson said Lao should have made sure that Pharmally is “technically, financially and legally capable’” before awarding the contracts.
Hontiveros asked the PS-DBM why it did not buy the COVID-19 testing kits directly from the manufacturer, which will be cheaper, instead of from Pharmally.
“As I understand it, if we go directly to the manufacturer, it would affect their dealership agreements with distributors here,”’ said PS-DBM executive director Jasonmer Uayan.
Hontiveros said other countries such as Chile and Australia bought testing kits for much lower prices when they decided to go directly to manufacturer.
“Don’t tell me na dito lang may dealership agreements,” Hontiveros said.
Uayan told Hontiveros he is not aware of such arrangements in other countries and maintained there are existing dealerships in the Philippines.
On questioning, he said the PS-DBM learned about the dealership from the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine.
However, RITM Director Celia Carlos denied informing PS-DBM of the dealership deals which supposedly prevent the government from purchasing testing kits directly from the manufacturer.
Carlos said what the RITM provided were only the technical specifications of the kits.
Uayan then corrected his statement about the dealership and pointed to the Department of Health as the source, and not the RITM.
Health Assistant Secretary Nestor Santiago said he would double check the information.
