Monitoring assets of civil servants

MANILA, Philippines—If Filipinos are wondering how government officials and employees become millionaires overnight, buying expensive cars, moving to upscale homes, or taking frequent trips abroad, the answers can be partly found by checking their Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Networth (SALN).

A SALN is a document that all those serving in government—from the lowliest clerk to the President—are required to submit. It discloses how much money they have, what property they own, what companies and businesses they have interests in, how much they owe and who their relatives in government are.

The disclosure includes not just the officials’ own assets and liabilities, but even those of their spouses and children below 18.

Transparency, honesty

By filing a SALN, a government employee complies with what is supposed to be government’s policy of transparency and honesty.

“As a government employee, you occupy a position that is vested with public trust,” said the manual for filing SALNs published last year. “The SALN is the badge of honor of the honest civil servant that must be accomplished with pride. It shows that an employee did not exploit his or her public office for illegal gain.”

Anticorruption tool

The SALN is an important anticorruption tool. It serves as evidence in lifestyle checks on officials suspected of having illegally obtained their wealth or of using their positions to enrich themselves. Republic Act No. 3019, the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, imposes criminal sanctions on grafters in government, while Republic Act No. 1379, the law on forfeiture of illegally acquired wealth, states that the government has the right to recover ill-gotten assets.

Government officials and employees can also be charged with perjury for misdeclaring their wealth in their SALNs.

Since 1960

The filing of SALNs started in 1960, when the anti-graft law was passed. In those days, public officers were mandated to submit every January a detailed and sworn statement of assets and liabilities, including a statement of the amounts and sources of their income, the amounts of their personal and family expenses, and the income taxes they paid.

A public officer found to have accumulated wealth “manifestly out of proportion to his salary and to his other lawful income” can either be dismissed or removed from office or, if convicted, be imprisoned for up to 10 years.

Modest living

Republic Act No. 6713, a post-Edsa law known as the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, makes the filing of SALNs not only a matter of obligation, but also a matter of ethics. Officials are supposed to live within their salaries and income because the Constitution says that not only is a public office a public trust, but also that public officials must “lead modest lives.”

The implementing rules of RA 6713 define modest living: maintaining a lifestyle “within the official’s visible means of income” as reflected in the official’s income tax returns, SALN and other documents pertaining to business interests and financial connections.

RA 6713 covers almost everyone in government service: those in elective as well as appointive positions, those holding permanent as well as temporary status, and those in career and non-career service. They must file SALNs whether they receive compensation or not.

Only public officials serving in honorary capacity, casuals and contractual workers need not file SALNs.

Public officials must accomplish three copies of the form and submit them to the human resource management office or administration office of their agency. The forms are then transmitted to specific offices that keep custody of the asset declarations.

In the case of the President, Vice President and commissioners of constitutional bodies, their SALN can be accessed from the Office of the Ombudsman. The sectoral offices of the Ombudsman in Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao keep records of appointed and elected local officials.

The SALNs of senators and representatives are kept at the Senate and House of Representatives, respectively. Those of Cabinet secretaries, undersecretaries and assistant secretaries as well as those of Armed Forces officers from the rank of colonel or naval captain can be accessed from the Records Office of the Office of the President.

The records of justices and judges can be found at the Clerk of Court or at the Office of the Court Administrator. The Civil Service Commission keeps the records of all other officials and employees.

Contents

A SALN should show an official’s assets, broken down as real property and personal and other property, and his or her liabilities, which can come in the form of loans, mortgages and other obligations the official must pay for either immediately or in the future.

For real property, a government official must declare the kind—land, house and lot, building—the location, the year and mode it was acquired, assessed value, current fair market value and cost improvements. Even if the property was acquired at no cost, through donation or inheritance, for example, the government official is required to state the fair market value.

Acquisition cost is the amount paid in obtaining ownership of the property. Fair market value is the purchase price that a willing buyer and a willing seller can agree on. Assessed value is the value stated in the records of the local assessor in the local government unit where the property is located.

Personal and other property are defined as those that are movable, such as cash, vehicles and jewelry. The SALN form requires a government official to list the year the property was acquired and the acquisition cost.

Examples of liabilities include personal loans, bank loans and loans taken out of the Government Service Insurance System, Pag-Ibig and other lending institutions. A government official must declare the nature of the liability and the amount.

An official’s net worth is the difference between total assets and total liabilities.

Apart from the assets and liabilities, government officials must identify the name of the business he or she is connected with or has a stake in, the business address, the nature of the business, and the date the shares were acquired or the connection made.

Relatives

Relatives in government must be identified, too. The SALN manual requires the listing of all relatives within the fourth degree of consanguinity and affinity, which means the official’s blood relatives as well the spouse’s. The names, positions, relationships and office addresses of relatives are required information in the SALN.

Disclosing business interests and relatives in government are supposed to be a safeguard against conflict-of-interest actions that may rule a government official’s behavior.

Guidelines revised

Whether intentional or not, many officials file erroneous or incomplete SALNs. For example, it is common for them to just declare the acquisition cost instead of the assessed and fair market values of their real property—even those that they have had for ages—in effect understating their total assets and net worth.

In February 2008, then Civil Service Commission chair Karina David issued a memorandum circular revising the SALN form. She said filing the same form year in, year out resulted in government officials and employees merely repeating the same entries, a chore she called “burdensome and time-consuming.”

“The Commission also noticed that the existing form was difficult to accomplish,” she said.

Two forms

The revised SALN consists of two forms. The Baseline Declaration (BD) is accomplished only once. New hires or appointees must submit it within 30 days of assumption of office. For incumbent officials, the deadline was April 30, 2008, covering information up to Dec. 31, 2007.

The other form is the Annual Declaration (AD), which is to be filed yearly on or before April 30.

The BD is the comprehensive listing of all of the government official’s assets, liabilities and net worth. The AD is not as detailed, but is more of an update on the BD. The government official declares in the AD whether he bought or sold assets, created or ended business and financial connections, and reduced or paid for liabilities.

“You can think of the AD as a passbook where only deposits and withdrawals from your account need to be documented,” said the manual for the filing of SALN under the new system.

Obstacles to access

Accessing SALNs used to be fairly simple. RA 6713 requires civil servants to be transparent and to adhere to a policy of full disclosure of transactions involving the public interest.

The implementing rules mandate that the SALN be available for public inspection at reasonable hours, can be accessed after 10 days from the time it was filed, and shall be available to the public for 10 years. All one had to do was write a request to the specific agency and wait for no more than 15 days before the document could be accessed.

But a recent memo from the Office of the Ombudsman has restricted public access to SALNs, imposing “certain guidelines” that Assistant Ombudsman Jose de Jesus Jr. said was meant to “merely abbreviate the otherwise confusing procedures in securing them [SALNs].”

The Ombudsman’s main argument in issuing Memorandum Circular 01 on June 16 was that it was just making sure that such documents “will not be used for illegal or immoral purposes.”

The memo states that a person seeking a copy of a SALN must prove that the reason for the request is “legitimate,” defined as for use in school or for study, for dissemination to the public by the news media, or for court proceedings with a subpoena from a judge.

But as Transparency and Accountability Network executive director Vincent Lazatin said, “Who will say in their request that the request is not legitimate or is illegal?”

Government IDs

The memo states that all requests are to be filed with the Public Assistance Bureau, and that the person who makes the request must accomplish a form that will bear his or her full name, signature, business or residential address and telephone number. This form shall be subscribed and sworn to before a prosecutor in the Office of the Ombudsman.

In addition, one must present two government-issued IDs, or in the case of students a student ID. This is to ensure that the “requesting party is not fictitious.” This provision is also meant to protect the right to privacy of public officials and employees.

The memo states that the accomplished form will be treated as a public record to be used by the government official or employee should he or she resort to legal remedies.

A request may be denied if the purpose is “contrary to moral or public policy,” if it is commercial in nature, if the person making the request appears to be fictitious and if the reason for the request does not fall under the legitimate reasons listed.

If the reason is for study purposes, the SALN can be inspected and reproduced, provided that the name of the SALN owner is not disclosed—or will be blackened. The Office of Legal Affairs will also review requests that appear to be deceptive.

If the request will be used for “extortion purposes or will pose danger to the personal safety of the official or employee concerned and/or that of his family, the request shall not only be denied but shall be immediately reported to the proper law enforcement agency.”

The Ombudsman will provide the reason for the denial of the request in all cases, the memo states.

The memo also does not allow anyone to conduct independent lifestyle checks. Should a person making a request have “reason to believe that an official or employee’s assets and properties are unreasonably disproportionate to his/her income,” the requesting party will not gain access to the SALN. Instead, the matter will be reported to the Field Investigation Office, which will make the request to access the official or employee’s SALN. –Vera Files, Philippine Daily Inquirer,
Luz Rimban, Avigail Olarte, Yvonne Chua and Ellen Tordesillas