City lawyer faces raps

By: Ador Vincent S. Mayol, Jose Santino S. Bunachita July 22,2014 - 07:33 AM

Cebu City Attorney Jerone Castillo is facing a complaint for serious dishonesty, breach of public trust and grave misconduct over accusations of “conflict of interest.”

Aside from being the city lawyer, Castillo serves as vice-president for administrative services in a private firm, said Arman Perez who lodged the complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas.

Perez, former secretary general of Bayan Muna-Cebu, asked that Castillo be dismissed, banned from government positions, and suspended preventively.

He claimed that the private firm which Castillo works with has a construction business in Leyte particularly in Yolanda-affected areas.

“The said circumstances is an obvious conflict of interest,” Perez said.

In response, Castillo said, “This is a pure harassment case. Hopefully it will be outrightly dismissed since the complaint is baseless.”

He confirmed he was a board member and vice president for administrative services of Kwyne Sales and Service Plaza Inc., an accredited service provider of Samsung. He said he has been transparent of this affiliation to the city government.

“I have declared that in my SAL-N.” Castillo said, showing copies of the document.

This, he said, is allowed under law.

“Under RA 6713 or the law on conflict of interest, we have authority to engage in private practice but we won’t accept cases involving City Hall so as to avoid questions on conflict of interest,” he said.

Castillo said that weeks ago, Perez intervened for one of Castillo’s workers who was accused of stealing money from their company.

He told Perez to visit their office to discuss things, as the city hall was not the place for the matter.
Perez did not show up, he said.

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