Lacson, 10 men charged with wiretapping, perjury

Sen. Panfilo Lacson and 10 other officers of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) were charged by the Philippine National Police before the Ombudsman yesterday with graft, perjury, wiretapping and malversation of property.

Charged with Lacson were Senior Superintendents Michael Ray Aquino, Magtanggol Gatdula, Dioscoro Reyes and Dennis Agaram; Superintendent John Lopez; Chief Inspector Steve Ludan; Police Officers 2 Giovanni Belen, Freddie Ferrer and Wendel Arinas, and Army Technical Sgt. Arturo Tabang.

Another former PAOCTF official who headed the Visayas unit, on the other hand, admitted to a panel of prosecutors yesterday that he flew to Manila a day before publicist Salvador "Bubby" Dacer was kidnapped along with his driver, and left late afternoon the following day.

Lacson and his agents are also being implicated in the killing last November of Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito, among other crimes.

Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said it forwarded to the Office of the Ombudsman yesterday a copy of a report from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about an alleged bank account of Lacson’s wife Alice in California.

In another development, alumni of the Philippine Military Academy were taken aback by the seeming insolence in the way Lacson addressed Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, the senator’s senior at the PMA, during Thursday’s Cabinet Question Hour.

Chief Superintendent Nestorio Gualberto, chief of the PNP’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, filed the charges against Lacson and his former henchmen before the Ombudsman yesterday. The suit will be referred to the Deputy Ombudsman for the military, Orlando Casimiro.

In a 10-page referral letter, the CIDG chief said that contrary to Lacson’s testimony before a parallel Senate inquiry during the impeachment trial late last year, the PAOCTF acquired bugging equipment from local distributor Armstrack Corp. (ATC) on Feb. 4 last year.

This makes him liable for perjury, he said, because the former police chief had told Sen. Renato Cayetano on Dec. 21 that the PAOCTF had "not acquired" the bugging devices, such as the GA900, from German-based manufacturer Rohde and Schwartz.

A 30 percent down payment was also made, Gualberto said, and the bugging equipment "delivered and received by the PAOCTF on April 28, 2000." The equipment were worth $653,116.

The CIDG chief added these were even installed in a van and "used in actual operations in disguise of testing." The original plan was to install the devices in a Mitsibishi L-300 van, and later to a four-wheel drive vehicle and a Ford Chateau wagon, but these fell through.

Gualberto disclosed the PAOCTF installed the bugging equipment — the Digital Direction Finder which can locate calls and GA900 which can monitor calls in both landlines and cellphones — in a Toyota Hi-Ace van.

In fact, ATC representatives became angry when the PAOCTF used the devices on Oct. 3 last year when then Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis Singson made his exposé against then President Joseph Estrada at Club Filipino in Greenhills, San Juan.

This was contrary to the agreement made by the PAOCTF and ATC, which provides that ATC trainors should always be present when the bugging devices are used.

"PO2 Freddie Ferrer and other PAOCTF officials admitted to ATC that on several occasions, they had conducted testing and actual operations on different dates in the absence of any ATC representative and without prior authorization," he said.

Gualberto futher revealed that the PAOCTF "dismantled the equipment without the presence of ATC’s local representatives."

Viña in Manila Nov. 23-24

Former PAOCTF Visayas head Senior Superintendent Teofilo Viña, whose office was based in Cebu City, told State Prosecutors Ruben Carretas and Juan Pedro Navera in a clarificatory hearing that he arrived from Cebu on the evening of Nov. 23 and left Manila 4 p.m. the next day.

"This is very significant because that’s the very crucial period. And he made this under oath. I think he shed a lot of light in this hearing. I was in fact surprised to hear that," Jose Manual Diokno, a lawyer of the Dacer family, told reporters.

Viña gave a blanket denial of his alleged involvement in the Nov. 24 kidnap-slay of Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in the counter-affidavit he submitted to the Carretas panel. His admission may have a significant bearing on the case however.

He also admitted in the preliminary investigation of the Department of Justice that three of his men –Crisostomo Purficacion, Jose Escalante and Marino Soberano –were used in the Dacer operation.

They (Soberano et al), along with 19 others, were charged with double murder in the sala of Manila Judge Rodolfo Ponferrada. The DOJ is now conducting a probe on the alleged liability of Senior Supts. Michael Ray Aquino and Cesar Mancao III.

Supt. Glenn Dumlao has pointed to Aquino and Mancao as among those who were calling the shots in the suveillance of Dacer. He also revealed the duo, who have since slipped out of the country, were in fact giving orders when Dacer was abducted and killed.

Van Nuys account

NBI Dirctor Reynaldo Wycoco said the FBI report states the bank account number of Alice Lacson in the Bank of America branch in Van Nuys, California.

Wycoco however said that the FBI report did not mention the amount of cash being maintained in the account. He earlier estimated that the balance could not be more than $50 million, and that the account was still active as of last month.

The NBI chief said the report, which virtually confirms the existence of one of three alleged US bank accounts maintained by the Lacson couple, was secured through the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) with the US government.

He said the NBI was caught in a bind over the report because the MLAT’s confidentiality clause prohibits the sharing of documents with another Philippine government agency.

"That is why we had to send the report to the Ombudsman through a sealed envelope for the eyes of Ombudsman (Aniano) Desierto alone. The MLAT prohibits the sharing of documents but the Office of the Ombudsman has the authority to demand (for them)," he said.

Not alright at all

This was the angry reaction of PMA alumni to Senator Lacson’s alleged trampling of a PMA tradition when he questioned a senior’s integrity.

At the close of Lacson’s interpellation of Reyes at the Senate Question Hour Thursday, the senator challenged the defense chief with the question, "All right, sir?" To which the latter relied: "Your honor, I’m still under oath."

This may seem insignificant to the ordinary listener, but for a PMA alumni, such remark is a violation of the cherished traditions of the country’s only military academy: a lower classman can never question an upper classman in public.

Lacson, a member of PMA Class 1971, first called the attention of his mistah (classmate), Sen. Gregorio Honasan, and Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, of Class ’61, and Armed Forces chief Gen. Diomedio Villanueva (Class ’68), before he questioned Reyes’ truthfulness and invoked the honor code among PMAers that "cadets shall not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do such."

Confronted with a query from a fellow PMAer, one is expected to respond "alright," which means he did not violate the honor code.

"It should not have been mentioned even in the Senate because that’s sacred to us. It’s part of our honor code being PMAers. I think it was done for media mileage," retired Army Brig. Gen. Rosalino Alquiza said.

But Alquiza, of Class ’55, maintained that Reyes responded to the challenge in a good manner. "It doesn’t mean he is guilty; he anwered it very well by saying he’s under oath," he said. – With Mike Frialde, Paolo Romero