TRC in zombieland still,
2 years after pork scam

AT THE height of the media hoopla over the pork-barrel scam two years ago, Dennis Cunanan had a perennially furrowed brow that matched a grim countenance. But the Dennis Cunanan who sat down with PCIJ recently looked relaxed – which is not exactly what one would expect from someone facing multiple graft cases at the Sandiganbayan.

The cases stemmed from Cunanan’s stint at the Technology Resource Center (TRC), a government-owned and controlled corporation (GOCC) attached to the Department of Science and Technology (DoST).

In 2013, TRC had been among five state firms singled out for possible abolition by the Governance Commission for Government Owned and Controlled Corporations (GCG), in large part because of their role as implementing agencies of allegedly anomalous pork-barrel projects.

In the last quarter of 2013, President Benigno Aquino III, approved the abolition of Zamboanga del Norte College Rubber Estate Corporation (ZREC), the National Agribusiness Corporation (NABCOR), and the Philippine Forest Corporation (PFC). Left standing, however, are the National Livelihood Development Corporation (NLDC) and the firm once headed by Cunanan, TRC.

Yet while TRC lives, it does so in zombieland.

TRC, insiders told PCIJ, “is still open but on the way to closing shop.” A DOST Technical Working Group, they say, has set up “parameters on the manner of closing operations.”

Read, Part 4 of our report on “Pork a la Gloria, Pork a la PNoy’:

* TRC in zombieland still, two years after pork scam

Until February this year, however, TRC has continued to offer livelihood training seminars, for fees of P1,815 (decorating balloons) to P4,269 (commercial bread-making) per person, including one held in Gerona, Tarlac on how to bake muffins and cookies.

On its Facebook page that links out to the DOST website, TRC this year has also offered training seminars on jewelry appraisal and pawnshop operation; accounting and record-keeping for small businesses, setting up a hardware/construction supply store, travel agency, bakery, silkscreen printing, retail store, beauty parlor, and other small business operations; and making Chinese dimsum, herbal soap and detergents, trendy balloons, processed meat, and doing tilapia culture, among others.

As the DOST’s corporate arm, TRC supports research and technology by providing investments in innovations and rolling out or marketing the products of these studies. But state auditors say that somewhere along the way TRC became a conduit for the flow of pork monies to fake nongovernment organizations (NGOs).

The Commission on Audit’s (COA) Special Audit Report on the disbursement of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), or simply pork barrel, form 2007 to 2009 abounds with serious allegations against TRC.

According to COA, P2.44 billion worth of pork monies was transferred to TRC during the period, and that in turn, TRC transferred nearly the entire amount, P2.432 billion to bogus NGOs linked to Janet Lim-Napoles, the supposed pork barrel scam queen.

The projects, the COA report said, were endorsed by a total of 143 senators and congressmen, notably:

* Seven senators — Edgardo Angara, Jose ‘Jinggoy’ Estrada, Juan Ponce Enrile, Gregorio ‘Gringo’ Honasan, Lito Lapid, Ralph Recto, Ramon ‘Bong’ Revilla. Of the seven, Revilla allotted the biggest amount of PDAF to TRC: P127.5 million.

* 136 members of the House of Representatives, including then Surigao del Sur 1st District Rep. Philip Pichay, who allotted P209.4 million of his PDAF to TRC.
From 2007 to 2009, said the COA report, TRC transferred the P2.432-billion pork funds it received to 39 NGOs.

Of these NGOs, eight had been organized by Napoles.

In total, the Napoles-linked NGOs got P478.64 million from TRC.

But COA said that the biggest payout from TRC to a single NGO went to Aaron Foundation Philippines Inc.: P476.41 million. — PCIJ, August 2015