The Department of Justice has been asked to prosecute the head of the state-run Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. for plunder in connection with the alleged P14-billion loss over its 2009 contract with an independent power producer for the Sual Power Plant in Pangasinan.
In a 20-page complaint filed by the San Miguel Energy Corp., PSALM president and chief executive officer Lourdes Alzona was accused of violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
Also impleaded in the complaint were Suguru Tsuzaki, president of Team Philippines Energy Corp.; and Kochi Tamura, executive vice president of Team Sual Corp.
The complainant alleged that the Memorandum of Agreement entered into in June 2009 by PSALM with TPEC and TSC, which served as the Independent Power Producer for the Sual Power Station, was disadvantageous to the government.
The said MoA entitled “Memorandum of Agreement in Respect of the Excess Capacity of the Sual Power Station” gave birth to the concept of “excess capacity” wherein it was agreed that the “ECA [Energy Conversion Agreement] Contracted Capacity would be 100 megawatt net per unit. TSC shall be entitled by itself and/or through TPEC, to market, offer, sell and supply the Nominal Excess Capacity to any customer, independent of and without payment of any fee to PSALM and/or NPC.”
In June 2009, SMEC won the bidding as the SUAL IPP Administrator and was granted the rights to 1,000 Megawatt Net Contracted Capacity of the Sual Power Station.
SMEC alleged that they were not able to get the Net Contracted Capacity of 500 Megawatt per Unit because TPEC’s 100 Megawatt Nominal Capacity was given priority in accordance with the 2009 MOA on Excess Capacity.
“The TPEC Trading amount is settled first and kept intact most of the time while the PSALM Trading Amount [for SMEC] is only the balance after the TPEC Trading Amount is deducted from the Total Trading Amount,” the complaint alleged.
SMEC, then requested the PSALM to review the question of MoA, but the latter eventually sided with TPEC and “practically endorsed pro rata sharing proposal saying that both SMEC and TPEC should share these [generation] imbalances.”
SMEC pointed out that TPEC illegally benefited from the excess capacity to the detriment of the Philippine government and SMEC. It stressed that from November 2009 to September 2013, TPEC was able to gain P17. 2 billion from the P2.82 million MWh generated as the “excess capacity” using the MoA settlement formula.
The complaint stressed that from the said amount, P14 billion should have gone to the government in accordance with ECA which states that the “entire Power Station output” should be dedicated to NPC while P3.3 billion should have been given to SMEC corresponding to the capacity that was taken from SMEC’s 1000 Net Contracted Capacity.
SMEC highlighted that the ill-gotten wealth in this case came from a series or combination of payments made to TPEC anchored on the illegal MOA executed by PSALM, TPEC and TS. In addition, it noted that all elements of plunder are present because of the connivance of Alzona with TPEC and TSC by continuing the implementation of the questioned MoA.
