Joker says Noli accuser an impostor

Sen. Joker Arroyo accused the accuser of leading vice presidential candidate Sen. Noli de Castro yesterday of fraud and of being an impostor.

Arroyo cited a 2002 decision of the Securities and Exchange Commission which revoked the registration of East Pacific AAA Foundation for "misrepresentation and prejudice against the general public."

The foundation is supposedly the predecessor of Bagong Lahing Pilipino Development Foundation Inc. (BLPDFI), which has accused De Castro of extorting millions from it. The senator has denied the accusation.

In its complaint against De Castro filed with the Office of the Ombudsman, BLPDFI claims it is formerly East Pacific AAA Foundation and that its chairman-president is a certain Alvin Alvincent Almirante.

Arroyo said what the complainant did not say "is that it could not have succeeded East Pacific AAA Foundation because East Pacific’s certificate of registration had been revoked by a unanimous vote of the entire board of the Securities and Exchange Commission on Oct. 14, 2002."

He said East Pacific was found to have wrongly claimed that it has millions in Marcos money that its members could share provided they obtained an identification card that cost P75.

He said the SEC found that Almirante, representing himself as the leader of East Pacific, was claiming that he was the real Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., the only son of the late President Ferdinand Marcos.

Arroyo noted that while Almirante claims that he is also the chairman-president of BLDPFI, his name does not appear in the foundation’s incorporation papers, and that the leading incorporator is a certain Almirante G. Bersales.

He said he discovered in the SEC ruling that Almirante was using Bersales as an alias.

"Thus, Almirante and Bersales are one and the same, the same person who claims to be the real Bongbong Marcos, now using aliases in two foundations. This amounts to fraud," he stressed.

He pointed out that part of Almirante’s ploy to confuse the public and give his foundations the "patina of legitimacy, is the use of big names."

"Their complaint uses one Andrew M. Gonzales as a complainant, misleading the public into believing that he could be... Bro. Andrew Gonzalez, formerly Erap’s secretary of education and president of La Salle University," he said.

He said in the light of the SEC findings, "it is BLPDFI, not Sen. Noli de Castro, that has been extorting money from its innocent members."

"Who are the concocters who brewed this crude demolition job against Noli de Castro?" he asked.

Arroyo and De Castro belong to the so-called Group of 5 in the Senate.