Government agencies may be asked to act on complaints on corrupt activities received by the Task Force Against Corruption (TFAC), Department of Justice (DOJ) Secretary Menardo Guevarra said on Monday, Nov. 9.
Guevarra pointed this out considering the TFAC will only select which corruption complaints and reports it will act on.
“We’ll form composite teams (as many as necessary) after the task force has determined that the nature, complexity, and magnitude of the corrupt acts subject of the complaints necessitate the creation of special composite teams to investigate them,” he said.
“Otherwise, we may just refer some complaints to specific agencies for appropriate action,” Guevarra pointed out.
The TFAC has already started receiving complaints and reports of corrupt activities through the DOJ Action Center (DOJAC).
The task force has already set a P1 billion threshold on what corrupt activities it intends to investigate.
But Guevarra had assured it can also investigate activities below that number depending on the “high impact on the delivery of government service to the people.”
He earlier said that the TFAC will initially investigate five government agencies, namely, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), the Bureau of Customs (BoC), the Land Registration Authority (LRA), and the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth).
President Duterte himself ordered Guevarra to have a task force investigate the entire government for corruption.
The TFAC is lead by the DOJ and includes as members the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the Office of the Special Assistant to the President (OSAP), the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC), the National Prosecution Service (NPS), the DOJ’s Office of Cybercrime (OOC), and the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC).