Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon on Monday reiterated that the financial documents they have been asking from Mohit Dargani and Linconn Ong are relevant for the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee’s probe into the procurement of overpriced COVID-19 pandemic supplies.
Drilon said these documents will help them determine if Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corporation has “fictitious” sales and if the company paid correct taxes to the government.
Because based on the audited financial statements of Pharmally, the senator said their total cost of sales amounted to P7.092-billion and they generated a sale of P7.48-billion from the Department of Budget and Management’s Procurement Service (DBM-PS).
“We want to know, if in fact, they purchased this amount or some are fictitous because they could not produce the purchase orders—the checks in payment and other evidence which will show that indeed they purchased P7.092-billion in supplies,” Drilon said in an interview on ANC.
“That’s what I’m asking for because we suspect that some of these so-called sales are fictituous,” he said.
The Senate has committed to transfer Ong and Dargani to the Pasay City Jail for their failure to produce the documents that have been subpoenaed by the Senate blue ribbon panel.
“These are really documents which are relevant to the probe and as I said, we support the position of the blue ribbon and the Senate president, that until this is shown to us, we could not perform our function properly,” he said.
He also pointed out these Pharmally officials have been claiming an overpayment of taxes and claimed of being entited to a tax refund of over P500,000, which he said are “certainly preposterous.”
“Therefore, we are asking for these documents to show they committed fraud in their filing of income tax returns,” he said.
He further said the prerogative of the Senate to arrest and detain resource persons who refuse to cooperate and answer questions, attend its hearings and the power to cite for contempt is not a “capricious exercise.”