He also welcomed any investigation of his alleged link to the companies that would clear his name.
In a statement, Deputy Executive Secretary Ricardo Blancaflor and concurrent spokesman for the anti-terror task force, corrected earlier reports that he is now one of the owners of Marikina Textile Mills Inc. — formerly Chingkoe’s Allstar Spinning Inc. — along with his driver Tomasito Lim, while Mario Roxas of Petron’s Metro Manila district sales office serves as its president.
Blancaflor admitted he was one of the original stockholders of the company but said he divested his shares before joining the government.
"In May 2001, I divested all my shares in Marikina Textile. To this date, I have (not) been a stockholder of Marikina Textile again," Blancaflor said, adding there is nothing illegal about a lawyer being a shareholder of a corporation in the incorporating stage or thereafter.
He said he had incorporated many corporations, initially becoming a stockholder in some of them. "This is a common practice among law offices and I have been a practicing lawyer since 1981," he said.
In a visit to The STAR office yesterday, Blancaflor also explained that in February 2001, a property owned by Chingkoe’s Allstar was foreclosed by Planters Bank. This same property was bought in a foreclosure sale by Marikina Textile when he was no longer a stockholder of the company.
He pointed out there was nothing illegal in Marikina Textile purchasing the property as this was not included in the tax credit scam cases charged against Chingkoe.
Allstar, which was supposed to be confiscated for defrauding the government of some P285 million in revenues through the use of spurious tax credit certificates (TCCs), was the subject of a complaint filed by Presidential Task Force 156 before the Ombudsman in June 2003.
Blancaflor, formerly an undersecretary at the Department of National Defense (DND), pointed to corrupt government officials and their cohorts involved in the tax credit scams as those who may be behind the attacks against him.
"Malacañang is serious in its anti-corruption campaign. My presence in Malacañang may be perceived as a threat to the present perpetrators and beneficiaries of the multimillion-peso racket that has continued to deprive government of much needed revenues," Blancaflor said.
"These corrupt government officials would do everything to stymie the investigations against them," he added.
Blancaflor also denied reports that he is under investigation because of the controversy but said he welcomed any probe that would clear his name.
"However, I am asking those behind the smear campaign against me to come out in the open and formally accuse me in the so-called tax scam," he said.
Blancaflor admitted that Chingkoe was his former client but clarified he never handled any of the tax credit scam cases. He said he has served as a lawyer for the Chingkoes in real estate and corporate matters, but never in the tax credit cases.
In a statement, he said that when he first came to work for Malacañang in August 2004, he immediately divulged to Executive Secretary Waldo Flores, then chairman of the Presidential Task Force 156 investigating tax scams, that Chingkoe had been his former client.
"I have no skeletons in my closet," he said.
Blancaflor said he learned on the afternoon of May 5 that an article mentioning that he was linked to the case was coming out in The STAR yesterday.
He said he immediately sent a statement to The STAR to set the record straight but still the article that came out "contained misleading and inaccurate statements."
"Despite the obvious facts, the documents are manipulated to make it appear that I was involved in the tax credit scam," he lamented.