NBI considering Devnani as Bentain case witness

Indian businessman Dharm "Danny" Devnani, who has accused ousted President Joseph Estrada and Sen. Panfilo Lacson of involvement in illegal gambling and drug trafficking, will be tapped by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to pinpoint the whereabouts of missing casino employee Edgar Bentain.

NBI Director Reynaldo Wycoco said investigators will ask Devnani to execute an affidavit detailing everything he knows about Bentain’s disappearance.

"We were lining him up as a witness in Bentain’s disappearance even before he appeared at the Senate," Wycoco said. "Even before he appeared at the Senate, somebody referred him to us."

In his testimony at the Senate, Devnani said he had information on Bentain’s disappearance that would be vital to police and NBI investigators who have faced a dead end in trying to solve the two-year-old case.

Wycoco said they are also readying two more witnesses to corroborate any new evidence that Devnani might disclose in the affidavit that he would submit to NBI investigators.

NBI agents are also hunting down at least five men, all civilians, who were said to have placed Bentain under surveillance before he was taken at gunpoint, he added.

Wycoco refused to give the names of the five suspects.

Bentain, a closed-circuit television operator at the PAGCOR-run casino at the Heritage Hotel in Pasay City, sneaked out a video showing then Vice President Joseph Estrada playing high-stakes baccarat with casino manager Butch Tenorio and businessman Atong Ang.

Bentain reportedly gave the video to former Estrada nemesis Manuel Morato, who was then chairman of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.

Morato, an also-ran in the 1998 presidential elections which Estrada won with the biggest percentage in Philippine history, then showed the video on television news a few months before the elections.

Early in the Estrada administration, Bentain was abducted at the steps of a five-star hotel along Roxas Boulevard in Manila as he was walking towards his car at the parking lot, where his frightened wife had been waiting for him.

In another development, Wycoco told reporters yesterday NBI agents are helping the Philippine National Police (PNP) in conducting "computer autopsy" on wire-tapping equipment, which Central Luzon police under Senior Superintendent Reynaldo Berroya had seized in a raid in a business establishment along Ortigas Avenue in San Juan.

Wycoco said the equipment was reportedly used by the disbanded Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) under then PNP chief Director General Panfilo Lacson to spy on the opposition during Estrada’s impeachment trial.

Wycoco said he has sent agents of the NBI’s Anti-Fraud and Computer Crimes Division under lawyer Efren Meneses to coordinate with police investigators at Camp Crame in Quezon City.

Wycoco said "computer autopsy" involves the use of sophisticated technology in coordination with foreign computer experts to decode whatever information is stored in the computer-aided bugging devices.

So sophisticated is "computer autopsy" technology that it can retrieve deleted information along with the complete dates when these were entered, he added.

Earlier, the NBI said the PAOCTF could have used the wire-tapping equipment to monitor the movements of public relations man Salvador "Bubby" Dacer and his driver, Emmanuel Corbito, just before they were abducted at the corner of Zobel Roxas Street and Sergio Osmeña Avenue in Manila on November 24 last year.

Slain labor leader Felimon "Popoy" Lagman could have been placed under surveillance using the same equipment before his assassination outside the alumni building in the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman, Quezon City last year, the NBI added. – Mike Frialde