Electric cooperative cashier nabbed over missing P150-M

By Erwin G. Beleo

SAN FERNADO CITY,  La Union – The National Bureau of Investigation regional office based here arrested a former head of the cashiering section of the La Union Electric Cooperative, Inc. (Luelco) wanted for six counts of qualified theft after allegedly amassing around P150 million from collected electricity bills.

Cecilla Olarte, Luelco’s former cashier, was arrested in her residence Wednesday morning by the NBI assistant regional director Atty. Dave Alunan.

Alunan served the warrant of arrest issued by Judge Ethelwolda Jaravata of the Agoo Regional Trial Court Branch 32 against Olarte who was reportedly in hiding for several months.

Olarte was indicted of the charges after the investigating prosecutors Gaudencio Valdez Jr. and Braulio Tade, in their resolutions approved by provincial prosecutor DaniloBumacod, found sufficient evidence to charge her for the crime of qualified theft, a non-bailable offense.

Initially, Valdez resolved eight of the 19 cases of qualified theft based on the complaint of Ramon Posadas, Luelco general manager, while Tade resolved the other 11 cases.

But an NBI source said only six counts of qualified theft were listed in the warrant and that the amount lost is around P150 million which is double than the initial P75-million.

Based on Posadas’ complaint, Olarte allegedly did not deposit to the Luelco account the collections for Sept. 21, and Oct. 16, 2012 and the collections for March 12, 13, 18, 20, 21, and 25, 2013 with a total amount of P39,831,000.

Olarte also allegedly did not deposit the whole amount of P55,217,170 collections for March 27, 2013 and April 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 12 ,15, 16, and 18, 2013. Of the total P55,217,170, she allegedly deposited only P19,896,835 with undeposited amount of P35,320,343 based on computations.

Posadas claimed that the huge undeposited collections were found out during an audit conducted by auditors of the National Electrification Administration and internal audit of Luelco.

“She is the only person who is in custody of the collections of Luelco during that period and because she could not account for the missing money, she violated the trust given to her to keep the funds of the cooperative,” Posadas said in his affidavit.

Olarte denied any wrongdoing claiming that the missing amount which were not deposited were given as cash advances to Luelco officials, employees and contractors.

However, during the investigation, Olarte failed to show proof of where the missing collections went.