Garcia Case 101

According to General Garcia, allegations against him were “bloated” thus his decision to
return only less than half of what he allegedly stole from government coffers. He offered to turn
over real estate properties, vehicles, shares of stocks and money in the bank valued at
P135,433,387.84. He is charged of plundering P 303M from state coffers.

Under the agreement approved by the Ombudsman on Feb. 25, 2010, the cases of plunder
and money laundering will be dropped in exchange for Garcia pleading guilty to lesser offenses
of direct bribery and facilitating money laundering.

Last Dec. 16, Garcia posted P60,000 bail for the two cases he pleaded guilty of and was
released from his detention cell in Camp Crame on December 18, 2010. He was ordered by the
Sandiganbayan’s 2nd division to post total bail of P60,000 or PhP30,000 for each case. The court
has not yet ruled on the plea bargain.

Facts:

On Nov. 21, 2002, Garcia authorized the opening of an “AFP Inter-Agency Transfer
Fund” account with the UCPB in the amount of the P200 million. Through an undated
disbursement voucher, Gen. Garcia and Col. Fernando S. Zabat signed, a check in the amount of
P200 million and dated Nov. 28, 2002 was issued from the AFP’s Land Bank account and
deposited to the newly opened UCBP account.

The P200 million represented reimbursements from the United Nations for expenses the
Armed Forces had advanced for sending peackeepers overseas.

It is important to note that the account name itself as an entity, “AFP Inter-Agency
Transfer Fund” does not exist. And the entire P200 million was never deposited to the AFP
Inter-Agency Transfer Fund account as the disbursement voucher had intended. Only P50
million was placed in Saving Accounts No. 132-1121-431-8 after the check was encashed. The
regular number of days of clearing checks was three days but the said checks, which was divided
into three accounts cleared on the same day.

Of the P200M, 50M was deposited to UCPB Alfaro at Acct. #132-1121-431-8. This is
the only account that appeared in the account of AFP that was covered by audit. Between May
20 and Aug. 17, 2004 it was found that an amount of 86.4M in debit and 34.3M in credit were
deleted from the passbook that AFP submitted for audit resulting in 52.1 discrepancy. In the
same account, about P22M of the deleted entries covered payments to 11 suppliers. Also,
another P36M of the deleted entries was moved to UCPB Salcedo on May 20, 2004 and was paid
mostly to the same 11 suppliers.

Another P100M of the P200M was deposited to UCPB Premium Savings Deposit
1743(PSD 1743) UCPB Alfaro With passbook #347264. The deposit was covered by a deposit
slip. The remaining P50M was declared to be deposited to the same PSD 1743 account with
passbook 34766 at the same branch but without deposit slip. The passbook however not only
bore tampered entries but was “fictitious and could not be identified.” A letter from
UCPB Alfaro admitted that this particular savings account did not exist in its system. The
auditors traced the account to UCPB Tordesillas Street in Makati.  Mendoza revealed a private
mail from a member of the investigating team of the United States Department of Justice who
said Bondoc told them the UCPB did a “coverup” of the missing P50 million.

Below are the other records of General Garcia’s anomalous transactions.

Money from the UN Garcia’ Take

Date and Circumstance Amount
May 24, 2002 – UN Remitted reimbursement
for rented equipment and subsistence
payments
December, 2003 - UN deposited money as $ 461,982
payback for the same expenses in 2002
Date and Circumstance Amount
$ 1.59M Ten days later, approx. May 3, 2002, Garcia’s $ 75,000
wife Clarita opened a dollar account with
Allied bank
December 19, 2003 - General Carlos Garcia $100,000
son’s, Ian Carl and Juan Paulo, brought
followed to the United States with
undeclared money.
Garcia as a Logistics Officer of the Army $25,400
brought money to the US in two separate
instances.
May 10, 2002 – Jan. 15, 2004 – Garcia as J6 $452,000
brought money to US on four separate
ocassions.
2002 – Garcia’s deposit with in the P 7,000,000
AFPSLAI reached P7 million.
2003 – Garcia took money to the US as $ 200,000
downpayment for two posh condominium
units in New York.
January to March 2004, he made three P 27,000,000
outward dollar transmittals.

  The Ombudsman also had in its hands a copy of the handwritten note signed by Clarita
Garcia, which claimed that as Armed Forces of the Philippines comptroller, her husband
routinely took “gratitude money” for approving and paying military contracts. Further that
during Garcia’s trips abroad, they each accepted up to $20,000 “shopping money” from
suppliers.

In the midst of all these, Gutierrez still insisted their evidence against Garcia is weak.
She denied allegations of illegal fixes.