Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla yesteday said the joint venture agreement between the Bureau of Corrections under suspended bureau chief Gerald Bantag and ATOM for the construction of a swimming pool inside the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City was unenforceable.
“It’s a piece of paper that belongs nowhere except the fact that, if he (Bantag) wanted to make a proposal, he should have been through the process given by our laws. They don’t follow the law and they want me to accept it” Remulla said.
The Justice chief issued the statement when his take was sought over Bantag’s claim that a JVA was entered into with ATOM for the construction of the pool, which according to the suspended official, was intended for scuba diving training of BuCor personnel.
Justice Assistant Secretary and concurrent spokesperson Atty. Mico Clavano echoed Remulla’s remark saying the JVA was void ab initio (void from the start).
Clavano said then Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra recommended to then President Rodrigo Duterte to disapprove the JVA for, among other things, lack of bidding and documentary requirements.
“There were issues about the nature of it being an unsolicited proposal because there are many requirements. There’s an unsolicited proposal subject to a challenge but it seems as though it was unilateral,” he said.
“Well, this came out of the interview of suspended Director General Bantag, on a certain radio station and he mentioned something about a joint venture. So we looked into it just to make sure that what he was saying was actually true. And we did actually find a memorandum from the former Secretary Guevarra to the president then, PRDD, advising him that the joint venture agreement supposedly entered into between DG Bantag of BuCor and ATOM was void ab initio,” Clavano said.
Meanwhile, Bantag is getting more creative with his explanations for the massive excavation found inside the New Bilibid Prison.
After earlier claiming that the deep hole will house a pool for his scuba diving sprees, Remulla said that Bantag has a different alibi now.
“That was supposed to be a treasure hunt for Yamashita treasure. Originally. I was told by Director General Bantag about it,” Remulla said Friday. “I told him to stop it.”
Remulla called the concept “ridiculous” and a waste of government resources.
He reminded that the NBP reservation is a patrimonial property of the Philippines and it belongs to the people and, thus, cannot be disposed of by a single person.
“Privatization has to go through the council. It has to go through the Department of Finance. It has to be approved by the Secretary of Justice. It has to be approved by the President. Marami hong approval process ‘yan (It has many approval processes),” Remulla explained.
“Even the SoJ (Secretary of Justice) has no power over that. It has to go through the process,” said Remulla who learned that the JVA was done in 2020 under the administration of former President Duterte and when Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra was still Justice secretary.
The Justice chief also pointed out that the BuCor Modernization Law cannot be used as basis for the JVA. He said: The law “does not give plenary powers to anybody to dispose of government property.
It has to go through a process,”
Guevarra, presently the solicitor general, said he was aware of the JVA between the BuCor and ATOM when he was still Justice secretary.
The SolGen said: “I was made aware of it after the JVA had been signed by BuCor and ATOM. I sent a memo to DG Bantag telling him to hold off any further action until the DoJ had reviewed the proposed transaction. Eventually my office found that the unsolicited proposal failed to comply with certain legal requirements, and we informed the office of the executive secretary accordingly. Since then, we have not heard about this project. It might have been discontinued.”
On the transfer of NBP to Nueva Ecija, Remulla said the transfer of the entire NBP will still retain the facility as a mega prison instead of the regionalization of the country’s prison system.