By Junex Doronio
MANILA — Short of daring Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman George Erwin M. Garcia to resign to ensure a credible and clean elections in 2025, SAGIP party-list Rep. Rodante Marcoleta called on his colleagues in the House of Representatives to conduct an investigation, in aid of legislation, on the alleged deposits made to several offshore accounts of the poll body chief by persons connected to the controversial South Korean firm Miru to collect and count votes in next year’s national and local polls.
“After Chairman Garcia challenged me to show proof, my team and I spent resources and time to track his offshore bank accounts. We then found 49 accounts opened only in 2022 and last year, registered in the Cayman Islands, China, Hong Kong, North America and Singapore — all traceable to him,” Marcoleta disclosed in a press conference on Thursday (01 August 2024).
Marcoleta said the burden has now shifted to Garcia, for the Comelec Chairman to prove these solid pieces of evidence wrong, if he can.
“This is very conclusive,” Marcoleta said of the pieces of evidence he presented against Garcia.
“No one can say this is merely an allegation because we have already verified his offshore bank accounts,” he added.
To recall, Marcoleta did not name the ranking Comelec official when he first made his explosive exposé on the Miru bribery scandal on July 9, but Garcia had quickly come out in the open to deny the allegations.
(ia/mnm)
