News Roundup 10 December 2022
Dec 10, 2022 • 5 min Read
Quiboloy sanctioned by US Treasury Dep’t over corruption, human rights abuse | INQUIRER.NET – Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, televangelist and spiritual advisor to former president Rodrigo Duterte, was sanctioned by the United States (US) Department of Treasury over alleged human rights violations and corruption. This sanction is in line with International Anti-Corruption Day and Human Rights Day, the department said. According to them, the US Department of Treasury is taking actions “to promote accountability for human rights abusers and corrupt actors across the world.” “For more than a decade, Apollo Carreon Quiboloy (Quiboloy) engaged in serious human rights abuse, including a pattern of systemic and pervasive rape of girls as young as 11 years old, as well as other physical abuse,” said the US Department of Treasury in a press release. According to the treasury department, Quiboloy founded the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, The Name Above Every Name (KOJC) church and proceeded to abuse his power to rape victims. “Quiboloy also subjected pastorals and other KOJC members to other forms of physical abuse. Reports indicate Quiboloy personally beat victims and knew where to hit them so there would be no visible bruising,” said the US Department of Treasury. The department also reiterated that Quiboloy was on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most wanted list for sex trafficking, fraud and coercion, bulk cash smuggling, and more. “All property and interests in property of the designated persons described above that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported to [Office of Foreign Assets Control]” said the treasury department. In addition to this, entities with at least 50% direct or indirect ownership by Quiboloy (unless authorized otherwise) cannot be transacted with by US persons or transiting within the US. “The prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any designated person, or the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person,” said the US Department of Treasury.
MIF ‘beyond repair,’ says nat’l scientist in economics | INQUIRER.NET – Economist and National Scientist Raul Fabella said no amount of tweaking could repair the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) bill because its flaws were fundamental: the moral hazard arising from unnecessary state intervention and the unjustified economic backdrop. At the heart of the bill, he said, was the consolidation of resources under one umbrella which would be wielded by a group of people who did not own them. “Positive returns for Maharlika placements will mean hefty private returns (bonuses) for these select group; but negative returns will be socialized, that is, charged to the nation,” Fabella said in a critique of the proposed sovereign wealth fund (SWF) that he sent to the Inquirer. “History tells us that such arrangements lead to irresponsible risk taking, bankruptcy and financial crises,” said the 73-year-old University of the Philippines professor emeritus. In his critique titled “Beyond Repair: The Maharlika Wealth Fund,” excluding the Social Security System and Government Service Insurance System as sources of financing for House Bill No. 6398, or any other fine-tuning, would not solve the fundamental problems. “The Maharlika Wealth Fund gets it very wrong by contriving that the main Philippine infrastructure problem is financing and becoming once more a market player in the risk-return space,” Fabella said. It is also a “dangerous illusion” to say that the Philippines has surpluses lying idle at a time of historically high fiscal deficit and massive debt load, he stressed. Sovereign wealth funds were conceived to invest funds sourced from accumulating excess—not needed for day-to-day operations—and these were normally from exports and trade, and capital account surpluses, Fabella said. But not all resources, especially borrowed funds, are a good fit, he added. “The current problem in 2022 and now is that our debt load is dangerously tending toward a payments crisis; the economy has to outgrow the debt to push back on the payments crisis,” he said. Fabella recalled that the country had initiated a sovereign wealth fund of sorts in the 1970s-1980s, albeit under a different name then. “It funded ‘behest loans’ granted by President Marcos 1 of which the legal cover was the Presidential Decree powers of the President under the 1973 Constitution,” he said. “Resources in DBP (Development Bank of the Philippines) and PNB (Philippine National Bank) became as it were the personal ATM of the president and first lady. The DBP and the PNB were emptied of resources in a massive but legal ‘privatized profit-socialized losses’ orgy. And the Philippines fell into a foreign debt-eclipse for a decade,” Fabella pointed out. Similarly, he said the Oil Price Stabilization Fund (OPSF) had started out as a “high-minded” government response to the oil crises and was meant to recoup the welfare gained from reduced pump price volatility. “But as is normal in government projects, the required price adjustments were politicized and OPSF became a black hole of fiscal resources threatening to bankrupt the state. No money for construction and repair of roads and bridges; [instead there was] massive subsidy for private cars and SUVs (sport utility vehicles),” Fabella said. The country had correctly scrapped the OPSF, privatized power generation and water utilities and embraced public-private partnership (PPP) in infrastructure building, he said. PPP reduced the financing hurdle of large infrastructure, but many projects are getting delayed and/or burning cash because government fails to deliver its part of the contract in the form of timely right-of-way, Fabella lamented. Despite its limits, he pointed out that the PPP had produced, among others, TPLEx, or Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway, Wawa Bulkwater dam and Skyway 3.
Fuel price rollback seen next week | PHILSTAR.COM – Motorists could see the series of reductions in pump prices continuing next week, with a hefty rollback looming for gasoline, diesel and kerosene. Cleanfuel said running trend as of yesterday showed a possible drop of P2.10 per liter in gasoline prices and a P2.90 per liter decrease for diesel. Department of Energy-Oil Industry Management Bureau director Rino Abad is also bullish that prices of fuel products will go down next week, even with just four trading days completed so far. “Though the amount varies, we are confident of a more than P1 per liter decrease in gasoline, diesel more than P3 per liter and for kerosene the rollback might even reach P4,” Abad said in an interview with dzBB yesterday. It will be the eighth consecutive week of decline in the prices of diesel and a fourth straight for gasoline if the projected price adjustments push through.
