A barangay captain from Bacolod City with arrest warrants for four counts of falsification of public documents and four counts of graft and corruption was apprehended at 6 p.m. last night, Police Station 2 chief, Senior Insp. Robert Dejucos said.

Brgy. 7 Captain Bernabe Sibug, however, said the charges were only politically motivated and will not affect his performance.

Dejucos said Sibug was apprehended by the team of the City Police Special Operations Task Group by virtue of an arrest warrant issued by Regional Trial Court Judge Franklin Demonteverde who set his bail at P24,000 for each count of falsification of public documents, and P30,000 for each count of graft and corruption charges, police records showed.

Investigation also showed that the charges were filed against Sibug and two other Brgy, 7 officials by six Sangguniang Kabataan officers in November 2009 before the Office of the Ombudsman Visayas in relation to the approval of the SK annual budget for that year of P180, 221.

In the complaints the filed, the SK members claimed that the SK 2009 budget was allocated by virtue of the passage of SK resolution number 11, that they said had not deliberated on.

They said the signatures of the SK members appearing on the documents were not only forged, but were also falsified. They added that when they conducted further investigation they found out that several SK resolutions had also been falsified, and disbursements had been made for year 2008.

In his reply to the complaint, Sibug said he signed the documents in the belief that they were what they were purported to be, relying on the presumption of regularity on the part of the Sangguniang Kabataan.

Sibug also said that the SK had indeed conducted sessions on the days indicated in the allegedly false resolutions, and that they accurately represented what they purported to be.

“I had no knowledge that the signatures were falsified and I could not scrutinize each signature because my obligation is only to approve the budget proposal”, he said.

Sibug had filed a motion for bail even before the warrants of arrest came out.*APN

back to top