A tax expert’s analysis that there could have been ghost deliveries worth billions of pesos in government procured COVID-19 medical supplies in the Pharmally Pharmaceutical’s deal provided the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee a new reason to extend further its inquiry into the controversy.
This was gathered at the resumption of the Senate hearings Friday, Dec. 3 even as Senator Richard Gordon, committee chairman, aired the probability of an extended detention for Pharmally executives, possibly until the end of current Congress in June, 2022.
Tax expert Raymond Abrea revealed that there are strong possibility indicating that a huge amount of the supplies procured by government from Pharmally was not delivered.
Asked by Gordon if it is correct to conlude that were ghost deliveries of the items paid for by Procurement Service-Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM), Abrea said this is possible because he found no documents to prove otherwise.
“Possible, Mr. Chairman, ‘pag walang documents. (If there are no documents),” Abrea said.
Abrea’s team of tax expert found that there were P3.4 billion undeclared purchases from the P7.2 billion financial statement presented to the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
The accountant testified that they reviewed the documents submitted to the Senate and found that P3.4 billion were unsupported purchases if the said documents were to serve as the basis.
` Gordon said findings made by the Abrea-led team of tax experts strongly indicated that government paid for deliveries that never happened, stressing that this showed that the supplier could have pocketed the amount involved.
In the same hearing, Abrea also raised questions on the income capacity of certain Pharmally executives in relation to their total investment with the company in 2015 and 2020, respectively.
Michael Yan who earned P1.584 million in 2016 was able to invest P52.125 million in the company while Rose Nono-Lin, a congressional candidate in Quezon City, gained P1.361 million in 2016 but was able to invest P136.353 million in just four years.