Saycon a jueteng collector - Estrada

Ousted President Joseph Estrada accused yesterday Pastor "Boy" Saycon, the controversial "civil society" leader who had a falling out with President Arroyo, of trying to centralize jueteng operations nationwide in connivance with an unnamed military general during the Ramos administration.

During a telephone interview with former Senate president Ernesto Maceda in his program "Manong Maceda sa Umaga" over radio station dwIZ , Estrada said he came across Saycon during the Ramos administration when he was Vice President and chairman of the defunct Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC).

"I remember (Saycon) wanted to centralize jueteng together with a certain general but he was discovered by former President (Fidel) Ramos who fired him because of that," he told Maceda when asked if he knew Saycon.

Estrada said that’s why when he became President he tried to legalize jueteng to remove a source of graft and corruption among local government officials and the police.

"And because of this, former Ilocos Sur governor Luis ‘Chavit’ Singson, who is the biggest jueteng collector in the country, got back at me and accused me of receiving regular jueteng payola," he said.

Meanwhile, businessman Ramon Jacinto has accused Sen. Edgardo Angara of entering into P100-million "conflict of interest" transactions when he was chairman of the Philippine National Bank (PNB).

"Sen. Edgardo Angara should be unmasked as a corrupt politician," he said in a statement. "He passes himself off as the protector of the Filipino people blaming (Mrs. Arroyo’s) lack of leadership for the economic difficulties we are now experiencing.

But it was he and his former boss, Erap, who caused these due to the massive corruption of their inept administration. Their wholesale plunder and tie-up with drug and gambling lords made Marcos look like an amateur. Erap and Angara damaged our international image so badly, it will naturally take time for (Mrs. Arroyo) to repair this."

Jacinto alleged that Angara’s modus operandi was "to unnecessarily foreclose PNB borrowers not friendly to them" and assign the cases to law firms of board members even when PNB has a battery of 70 lawyers.

"In my case, even if the PNB staff recommended that there should be no foreclosure on the PNB’s Buendia Avenue property I had bought because the Asian crisis was not my fault, the Angara board was eager to foreclose so they could award P60 million worth of legal fees to the law office of fellow board member Atty. Boy Reyno," he said.

"I paid the highest price at that time and PNB earned almost P3 billion. My group also paid $40 million for the down payment and one year’s interest. The whole PNB staff recommended a restructuring. There were others they victimized."

Jacinto said he has documents to prove the alleged anomalous contracts worth P100 million which the PNB entered when Angara was chairman of the board.