THE Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) takes center stage anew after plunder complaints were filed against its officials and the designated e-lotto service provider for allegedly setting aside a 14 percent commission for the private contractor.
In the graft and plunder complaints filed before the Office of the Ombudsman against the PCSO executives – including its general manager Melquiades Robles, the Filipinos for Peace, Justice, and Progress Movement (FPJPM) particularly cited an original proposal made by the Pacific Online Systems Corporation (POSC) embarking on zero commissions – or at no cost to the government.
To prove their claim, FPJPM attached the POSC letter proposal submitted to the PCSO on June 29 last year.
The letter reads: “Our Corporation, PACIFIC ONLINE SYSTEMS CORPORATION, would like to signify our interest and intention to offer PCSO our system and services. With this, we are submitting our proposal at no cost nor risk to PCSO.”
Despite an offer deemed advantageous to the government, the group said that the PCSO opted to give the POSC a 14 percent commission – as stipulated in the final Memorandum of Agreement signed by both parties.
“The Letter of Intent and accompanying documents clearly stated ‘at no cost’ to the government. Nag contract negotiations lang sila ay biglang napatungan na ng 14% commission. Eh ‘zero commission’ nga as per original proposal. We need the PCSO general manager to answer the question – Anyare?,” said Edwin Valenzuela in his capacity as FPJPM spokesperson.
“In a nutshell, this complaint revolves around the simple and glaring fact that said MOA entitles POSC to fourteen percent commissions, even though the proposal of POSC was for zero commissions and/or no cost to the government,” reads part of the FPJPM complaint.
FPJPM also took note of the absence of another key point of reference under the original proposal for which the government opted to shoulder the cost of establishing the Web-based Application Betting Platform (WABP), the incorporated systems that should have been shouldered by POSC.
“However, when the MOA was executed between PCSO and POSC on 30 August 2023, the MOA, in no uncertain terms, entitled POSC to receive an unconscionable and outrageous payment of fourteen percent (14%) commission based on the generated daily sales, paid on a weekly basis,” it added.
According to FPJPM, such a scheme is disadvantageous to the government.
“It is clear that said contracts or transactions are grossly and manifestly disadvantageous to the Government. We reiterate that POSC’s E-Lotto proposal was for zero commissions, at no cost, to PCSO, whereby POSC assumed all the cost and ALL the risk,” the group added.
Members of the Philippine Congress earlier ranted at the PCSO for not seeking clearance from the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel (OGCC) before entering a lopsided deal.
Surigao del Norte 2nd District Rep. Robert Ace Barbers said that the MOA “clearly falls within the purview of 2023 Revised Guidelines and Procedures for Entering into Joint Venture Agreements between Government and Private Entities,” for which the OGCC has the final say – whether to give an approval or otherwise.
Since last year, the PCSO has been consistently rocked by controversies arising from what many referred to as “game-fixing” which allowed dubious names to claim the jackpot – not just once but multiple times, raising suspicion that such a mathematically impossible scheme has been enriching “the few chosen ones inside the PCSO itself.”
Never in the history of the PCSO had one bettor winning the jackpot twice. (ANGEL F. JOSE)
