Binay earns ₱2B in kickbacks

Sen. Antonio F. Trillanes IV said yesterday that Vice President Jejomar C. Binay earned more than ₱2 billion in kickbacks from “ghost” service personnel and janitorial, security, and information technology contracts entered into by firms supposedly owned by his dummies with the Makati City government totaling P5 billion in the last 10 years.

“Dito sa ₱5 billion contracts lahat, ₱2 billion dito easily napunta dito sa mga pamilya ng Binay or the Vice President in particular,” Trillanes said during the resumption of the Senate Blue Ribbon sub-committee probe into alleged corruption in Makati.

Violeta Lazo, officer-in-charge of the Makati General Services Department, said that the city government paid ₱926.4 million for IT services from 2008 to 2014, ₱2.30 billion in janitorial services from 2005 to 2014, and ₱2.38-billion from security services from 2005 to 2014.

However, Lazo said red flags were apparent as they noticed that the same companies would win the contracts.

“In 10 years, pare-pareho ang nanalong kumpanya sa mga IT services, pagsu-supply ng janitor, at security guard. Umaabot hanggang 92 percent ng mga kontrata ay napupunta sa isa o dalawang kumpanya lamang,” Lazo said.

Only two IT contractors – Codeworks and Powerlink – were able to corner most of the contracts in 2007 to 2014 while the other IT contractors, Geodata, NetEdge, and Eastern Telecom, had the rest.

Omni Security and Corporate Solutions Management and General Services bagged 83 percent of the total contracts for janitorial services with the former cornering a total of ₱1.7 billion.