Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) Director-General Jeremiah Belgica said the graft allegations against him and other ARTA officials were malicious as they were only doing their job to make sure that the law on the automatic approval of applications is implemented.

Belgica said this after the Office of the Ombudsman (OMB) ordered the six-month suspension of five ARTA officials, including him, due to an ongoing investigation of the graft charges against them.

Lawyer Adel Tamano, the administrative officer of DITO Telecommunity, accused ARTA officials of violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. They had supposedly favored NOW Telecom Company. Inc. in the distribution of contingent frequencies

In his statement, Belgica said that the allegations were "malicious" as they were only implementing the Ease of Doing Business Act.

"It is merely on the basis that ARTA applied the provisions of R.A. 11032 that we were preventively suspended by the Ombudsman for six months," he said.

"Nakikita naming malisyoso ang paratang dahil una sa lahat hindi ako pumirma ng Order of Automatic Approval o kasama sa anumang pagdinig sa reklamong ito. Sa kabila nito, isa pa rin ako sa mga kinasuhan at isinailalim sa preventive suspension (We think these are malicious allegations because I did not sign an Order of Automatic Approval or was part of any hearing about this case. Despite this, I was still included in the preventive suspension order)," he added.

Under the Ease of Doing Business Act, government offices have three days to act on simple transactions, seven days for complex transactions, and 20 days for highly technical transactions. Applications and requests submitted with complete requirements and full payment but not processed within the prescribed processing time shall be automatically approved and renewed under the law.

According to Belgica, ARTA only acted on the formal complaint NOWTel filed with ARTA on May 30, 2020, citing the automatic approval provision of the Ease of Doing Business Act.

However, while the case was pending with ARTA, Belgica said that the National Telecommunications Office (NTC), in September 2020, suddenly approved the Provisional Authority of NOWTel, but still with no appropriate usable frequencies that were part of the original application.

On March 1, 2021, ARTA issued an Order of Automatic Approval declaring the completeness of NOWTel’s application and deemed the same as automatically approved by operation of law and directed the NTC to issue the Provisional Authority and the concomitant frequencies as prayed for in the original letter application.

Belgica stressed that ARTA was not the one that gave NOWTel the frequencies because the agency has no power to do such an act.

"Hindi kami ang may kapangyarihan na magbigay ng frequencies or provisional authority (We do not have the power to distribute frequencies or provisional authority)," he said.

"Ang approval o denial ng application ay nakadepende sa ahensya pero kung hindi ito naaksyunan, doon pumapasok ang aplikasyon ng batas (The approval or denial of an application depends on an agency but we have to apply the law if they won't act on the application)," he added.

"Wala ho kaming intensyon na kunin ang kahit anong kapangyarihan ng NTC na pag-assign ng frequency sa NOWTel (We have no intention of taking any power of the NTC to assign NOWTel's frequencies)," he continued.

Belgica stressed that the people in ARTA are not corrupt government workers.

"Hindi po kami korap. Ginagawa lang po namin ang aming trabaho. Kami po’y trabahante ng gobyerno (We are not corrupt. We are just doing our job. We are workers of the govenrment)," he said.

"Sa loob ng magtatatlong taon, mahigit walong libong mga tao na ang nakinabang sa automatic approval (For the past three years, more than 8,000 individuals have benefitted from the automatic approval)," he added.