But the story behind the fire that razed the 500-square meter plot where the DA office once stood is one that witnesses say involves not just arson, but assorted crimes, including murder, malfeasance and the thievery of public funds.

It is a story that shows that exposing corruption in places like Cotabato may be life-threatening because grafters can go to great lengths to protect themselves.

But this story also attests to the courage and persistence of those who expose wrongdoing despite the threats to their lives and careers.

The story begins in 1990 when chemist Marlene Esperat took on the job of chief of the Regional Chemical Analysis Laboratory  (RCAL) for the Livestock Division of the DA’s Regional Field Unit in Central Mindanao (RFU 12). The laboratory was then located in the Sultan Kudarat municipality of Maguindanao, about eight kilometers from Cotabato City.

“There was a cobra inside the laboratory, which was surrounded by tall grass,” Esperat recalled. “There was no water, no air-conditioning and the lab equipment was covered with dust.”

For the next six years, Esperat, an energetic woman determined to do her job well, hounded RFU 12 for funds to buy the equipment she needed and to construct a new building to house the laboratory. While following up on her request, she accidentally saw the regional unit’s 1991-1992 financial report, which said that there was an annual allocation for her laboratory of P400,000. “But I was receiving only P175,000,” she says. “That’s when I became suspicious.”

In 1996, Esperat took part in the DA’s National Chemistry Congress in Iloilo City.  There, she learned that other RFUs had set aside P1 to 2 million each to construct buildings for their laboratories as part of the DA’s overall plan to boost livestock research.

Esperat then confronted Assistant Regional Director for Livestock  Mustapha Ismael and asked for a new building. But Ismael told her that the funds meant to build the proposed laboratory had been channeled to other livestock-related facilities like breeding stations. Ismael, RFU finance officer Osmeña Montaner and other regional officials promised that by 1997, the laboratory would get all the funds it needed.

But not long afterward. Esperat came across the RFU 12’s official logbook, and discovered that in March 1997, Montaner had disbursed P1 million to a certain Jettie Construction supposedly as payment for the construction of a laboratory building. The fund release was highly irregular since the construction had not even started.

Later, in June 1997, Esperat went to Manila and checked the disbursement report of the RFU 12 at the Department of Budget and Management. She was aghast when she saw records saying that the livestock division of the regional office, to which her laboratory belonged, had already been given P8 million to construct a building for the lab.

Esperat returned to Cotabato City and demanded that Montaner explain why so much money had been released for a non-existent building. She went on to file formal complaints at the Office of the Ombudsman in Mindanao and at the Legal Division of the DA-Central Office. She accused Montaner of being the mastermind of the various irregularities in the region.

She also accused 16 regional officials and employees, including former regional directors Alejandro Yadao and Bienvenido Almirante and  incumbent Assistant Regional Directors Ismael and Abusama Alid, of diverting funds intended to build a laboratory to buy useless and overpriced office supplies. She further charged that these office supplies were just “ghost” purchases. 

When then Agriculture Secretary Salvador Escudero III learned about the case, he ordered an investigation, and in February 1998, revoked Montaner’s authority to sign checks for the regional director.

Ismael, the assistant regional director, wrote a letter to Escudero denying all of Esperat’s charges. Tagging Esperat as a “very liar woman,” Ismael explained that the proposed laboratory building was not constructed in 1997 because Esperat insisted on a new design for a three-story building instead of the original two-story building that she had earlier proposed.

In public, Esperat and Montaner traded barbs. She reported Montaner’s supposed anomalies to the local press and told reporters that suppliers who dealt with the DA in the region had confessed to her that “they have to resort to substandard deliveries because RFU 12 officials were demanding 10 to 20-percent commission.” These suppliers, Esperat said, were afraid to issue affidavits for fear that Montaner would get back at them.

In an interview, Montaner denied these charges. “No such thing happened in Cotabato. Kung totoo yan, ba’t wala pang nagrereklamo (If these allegations are true, why has no one come forward to complain)?”

On May 7,1998, amid the heat of these arguments and while Escudero’s probe on Esperat’s allegations was making progress, the DA’s office in Cotabato City was gutted by fire. Because the incident took place just a few days before the presidential elections, the fire was dismissed as just another election-related event.

But one year after the fire, two witnesses, regional property custodian Pembain Sangcopan and security guard Carlo Carulasan, swore in written affidavits that Montaner and his friends burned down the DA office to destroy evidence of their wrongdoing.

Carulasan narrated that on April 30 and May 4,1998, he saw Montaner’s driver bring two gallons of gasoline and flammable substances to the accounting office of RFU 12.

Then, at mid-afternoon on May 7, the guard was called to a meeting with Montaner, four other RFU officials and two local policemen. In that meeting, Carulasan said he was told that “something” would happen to him if he did not cooperate with the group.

An hour later, Carulasan said he found out that a fire had started in the DA’s accounting room. He ran to the  accounting office, hoping to help quell the fire. Instead, he came upon Montaner’s driver, who poked a gun at him and ordered him to stay put.

Carulasan said he saw the driver and his companions pour gasoline in the other offices and then turn on electric fans and air conditioners to fan the flames. Three days afterward, he said, the same group burned other DA offices, including the livestock and personnel division and the auditors/cashier’s office.  

As the fires raged, Sangcopan, the property custodian, managed to save some documents from burning. These included the list of P7.9-million worth of office supplies which were supposedly bought by RFU 12 in 1996, but which Sangcopan testified were never delivered.

Both Carulasan and Sangcopan had earlier signed affidavits absolving Montaner of involvement in the arson. But the two witnesses retracted their statements after fleeing Cotabato City and being placed under the protection of the government’s Witness Protection Program.

Last November, the Department of Justice (DOJ) recommended the dismissal of the arson charges against Montaner. DOJ Prosecutor Carlos Pormento said that the witnesses were not credible, although he recommended that several of Montaner’s associates, including his driver, who was seen by these same witnesses pouring gasoline in the building, be charged with arson.

The DOJ prosecutor also relied on the certification of RFU 12’s auditor that audit reports that would attest to Montaner’s alleged wrongdoings did not perish in the fire as the DA’s audit office was not severely damaged by the blaze.

A recent visit here, however, showed that the entire DA regional office has been reduced to ashes, except for a few bricks and wooden posts. Moreover, despite repeated requests, Montaner could not produce the audit documents that supposedly survived the fire.

Esperat fled Cotabato on May 10,1998, after she learned from Carulasan that Montaner planned to have her killed.

She took the murder plot seriously, learning from the experience of Estelita Jardino, assistant chief accountant at the Agriculture Training Institute (ATI), an attached agency of the DA. Jardino, who has one blind eye and partly deaf ears, alleges she was the victim of Montaner’s failed murder attempt in 1982.

At that time, Jardino was RFU 12’s accountant and was imposing strict accounting and auditing rules on Montaner, then the regional budget officer. She became suspicious that anomalies were taking place after she had visited the Central Mindanao Integrated Agricultural Research Center  (CMIARC) in Kidapawan, North Cotabato, and learned it didn’t receive any planting materials even if the funds for these materials had been disbursed.

According to Jardino, the DA’s suppliers told her that they were forced to deliver substandard farm inputs or not to deliver anything at all because Montaner was demanding commissions ranging from 20 to 50 percent. But neither the suppliers nor the CMIARC officials were willing to issue affidavits for fear of Montaner.

As the months passed, Jardino said Montaner was becoming increasingly upset with her for demanding proper documentation for releasing funds. Jardino said that she also had to brush off Montaner’s earlier attempts to bribe her. When he realized that she could not be bought, Montaner asked her to leave Cotabato City, she testified. She also began getting anonymous threats on the phone and by mail.  

In September 1982, Jardino was shot near her left eye while she was at the Bureau of Agricultural Extension compound in Cotabato city. She went into a coma for some time and was bedridden for over two years.  In 1985, when she had recovered, she was reinstated and assigned to the ATI’s office in Metro Manila.

But still, Montaner did not leaver her alone, she said. Jardino claimed she was forced to drop the graft charges and frustrated murder attempt that she filed against Montaner at the DA-Central Office and the National Bureau of Investigation because in August 1998, Montaner threatened to kill her if she refused to do so.

“When I returned to Cotabato City to get my salary, Montaner cornered me,” recalled Jardino. “He said, ‘Lita, sign this document. It’s a statement of desistance. Sign it or you will not get out of Cotabato alive.’” She signed the document and never set her foot in that city again.

Jardino considers herself lucky to be alive. In February 1989, Regional Seed Coordinator Geronimo Provido reported that RFU 12 officials had purchased P291,000 worth of overpriced palay seeds meant for land reform beneficiaries and paid for the products in advance of delivery in December 1988.

Two months after he reported the anomaly, Geronimo was gunned down in his own home by two unidentified men.  In November 1989, Provido’s  widow  Victorina asked then Agriculture Secretary Carlos Dominguez to investigate the killing.

In March 1990, the DA’s Board of Personnel Inquiry (BOPI) verified Geronimo Provido’s report. The BOPI recommended that several regional officials, including Montaner, be slapped with “charges of dishonesty and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of service.” But these charges were never filed. The BOPI logbook says that that the case was dropped because no one was pursuing it.

Only 10 years later would more facts about Provido’s murder come out. In his July 1999 affidavit, RFU 12 security guard Carulasan alleged that Montaner told him that it was his henchman, Berting Salipada, who killed Provido.  

Montaner  finds this allegation preposterous. “Kung totoo yan, bakit wala pang naikakaso sa akin (If these were true, how come no one has sued me)?” he asked.

But there were findings that attested to anomalies pinned on Montaner. In 1987, the Commission on Audit (COA) reported that for 1985 and the first semester of 1986, several financial transactions of RFU 12 were riddled with irregularities. These included disbursements made to CMIARC which were either not received or remained unaccounted for or else were used for purposes other that for which they were intended.

While then COA Chairperson Eufemio Domingo recommended to the DA to further investigate these irregularities, the case never prospered because no one filed charges. 

Montaner, however, denied that he had anything to do with the irregularities discovered by COA.

Escudero, who had ordered a probe of RFU 12, says that Montaner has a lot of explaining to do, but insists that the anomalies in RFU 12 are isolated cases.

But an examination of cases filed against other RFUs shows that the same pattern of anomalies takes place in other regions. The only difference is that in other areas, there is none of the macabre drama that has taken place in Central Mindanao.