Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) Director Sandra Cam isn’t backing down. She insisted once again on Augsut 15 that she will “spill the beans” on the corruption she’s uncovered in her agency, reports The Manila Times.
She made the statement in response to Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) Commissioner Greco Belgica, who asked Cam to back up her claims of corruption and cover-up in the PCSO. Cam responded that she’s ready to show everything in a Senate inquiry:
“Philippine Presidential Anti Crime and Corruption Commissioner Greco Belgica already has in his possession all the documents to prove corruption in Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office since May 2019.”
Cam added that the evidence she submitted to PACC is the same that she showed to President Rodrigo Duterte in a May visit to Tokyo, Japan. That presentation to the country’s leader eventually caused him to shut down all PCSO operations. He later allowed the PCSO to resume operation while keeping small-town lotteries (STLs) on pause.
“Aside from these documents Cam admits that she still has information regarding the corruption in PCSO and she’s ready to spill the beans in a Senate or House Inquiry,” Belgica noted. “We are interested to hear what she has to [say] to us, not to take it as the truth, but to investigate and allow it to go to through the process.”
If Cam’s new evidence is anything like her recent interviews have suggested, she may have enough to force Duterte to once again shut down the PCSO. She’d previously revealed that the top brass of the organization knowingly allowed STL partners to operate without sharing revenue with the government, a breach of their contracts for running lottery operations.
Adding to that, there’s also the recent accusation that the PCSO allowed the same STL operations to evade their taxes. The Volunteers against Crime and Corruption (VACC) revealed recently that while the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law specifically mandates that lotteries pay taxes, the PCSO wasn’t enforcing this responsibility.
