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AFTER former Mandaue City mayor Thadeo Ouano, arrest warrants will soon be issued to Lapu-Lapu City officials led by Mayor Arturo Radaza and city engineers Julito Cuizon, Fernando Tagaan Jr. and Rogelio Veloso, the Ombudsman-Visayas said.
The Lapu-Lapu City police said they will serve the warrants once they are issued by the court.
CEBU DAILY NEWS tried but was unable to contact Mayor Radaza or his wife Paz for comment.
Radaza and the city engineers were implicated in the purchase of decorative lampposts installed for the 12th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit held in Cebu in 2007. Graft probers said the lampposts purchased by the national government were grossly overpriced.
Last Friday, police served arrest warrants to Ouano, Mandaue City engineers, officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways in Central Visayas (DPWH-7) and technical and bids and awards committee members in relation to the graft case.
Also included were officials of the Fabmik Construction and Equipment Supply Co. Each of them posted a P30,000 bail.
Robert Lala, former DPWH-7 director and another respondent in the case, posted bail ahead of the other respondents.
Apostol said the respondents were included in a report made by the Commission on Audit (COA) on the lampposts since they signed in some of the contracts.
“The respondents' names need not be mentioned in the COA report. But the fact that they are involved in an irregular transaction is enough to indict them,” Apostol said.
Attorney Gloria Lastimosa-Dalawampu, Ouano and the Mandaue city engineers’ lawyer, earlier questioned the re-investigation done by the Sandiganbayan saying her clients were not mentioned in the COA report.
Dalawampu, however, admitted her clients were among those who made the required Program of Works and Estimates (POWE) for the lampposts.
She asked the anti-graft office to include as respondents DPWH central office officials who made the project.
Apostol said the Ombudsman Visayas has requested their central office in Manila to conduct a probe on the alleged involvement of national officials
He said the anti-graft office recommended that an investigation be made against Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane, Assistant Secterary Rafael Yabut, and Undersecretary Salvador Pleyto of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).
The Ombudsman Central Office, he said, might already be conducting a fact-finding investigation which he said is confidential.
The Ombudsman Visayas originally filed five cases against two contractors and several local officials with the different divisions of the Sandiganbayan in relation to the lamppost case.
Two of the five cases were remanded to the Ombudsman Visayas for “strengthening.”
On May 2009, the Ombudsman Visayas re-filed the four cases back to the Sandiganbayan, including as evidence the COA report on the purchase and installation of the P365-million worth of lampposts.Reporter Ador Vincent Mayol
