MANILA – The complainant in 15 graft charges against Masbate Gov. Antonio T. Kho has dropped the ten remaining cases after the Ombudsman’s outright dismissal of the initial five lawsuits.
Admitting that there’s no anomalous acts that can be inferred from his complaints, Ruben Fuentes, a media practitioner in Masbate, signed on March 14, 2024 a desistance affidavit for the ten complaints still pending with the Deputy Ombudsman for Luzon.
Fuentes has also apologized to Kho and other 10 provincial officials who were implicated in the complaints.
He said “I apologized to Gov. Antonio Kho and the other officials of Masbate provincial government for filing these baseless and malicious cases. I am deeply sorry and I regret whatever embarassment these complaints may have caused in their names and reputation in the eyes of their constituents.”
Fuentes explained in his two-page Affidavit of Desistance that following the Ombudsman’s evaluation of the five dismissed cases, his complaints were really prematurely filed.
He acknowledged that the nature of the dismissed cases is similar to the remaining ten complaints still awaiting disposition by the Ombudsman.
Fuentes admitted that he had initially relied on incomplete information when he filed all the 15 graft cases.
“The common reason given for the outright dismissal is that the complaint is premature because the basis, which are the findings and observations contained in the Management Letter of Annual Audit Report of the Commission on Audit, are not final as they are still subject to the agency’s comments or compliance with COA’s recommendations,” stessed Fuentes in his sworn statement.
He said that “as I pondered on the outright dismissal of the aforecited complaints, I realized that indeed the COA issuances are not final until a complete appreciation of the facts and circumstances which surround each project. For this reason, no acts of anomalies or corruption could be inferred based on the COA issuances.”
In several instances last year, a total of 15 cases of the same nature were filed by Fuentes against Kho and ten other officials of the provincial government where he alleged that anomalous disbursement of public funds were committed by the respondents.
However, through separate notices sent to the complainant, the Ombudsman outrightly dismissed five of the 15 graft raps citing the case of Ombudsman v. Andutan, Jr. (G.R. No. 164679, July 27, 2011). The Ombudsman held that conclusions drawn merely from audit reports hinge on technical matters and may still be subjected to clarification through discussions between the COA and the public officer.
Kho was reelected Masbate governor in the May 2022 polls. Last year, the provincial government was recognized by the Philippine Statistics Authority for reducing poverty incidence by 11.3% from 2018 to 2023, the best performer in the region citing massive infrastructure projects and more accessible trade routes as contributing factors.
Kho was also named as one of the top performing governors by the analytics team of independent survey firm RP-MD Foundation, citing his efforts in establishing linkages via shipping routes from Masbate to neighboring regions of Bicol, Calabarzon, Mimaropa, Eastern Visayas, Central Visayas and as far as Northeastern Mindanao, making the province the new transhipment point of the country.
Maintaining peace and order in the province by keeping low the level of index and non-index crimes and having led the surrender of hundreds of rebels had earned the provincial gov’t some P500 million support funds from PAMANA-OPAPP and another P4 billion worth of rural infrastructure projects from the Philippine Rural Development Program.
