AFP: NPA leaders extorting millions

MANILA, Philippines – Senior leaders of the New People’s Army (NPA) extort money from businesses and sexually exploit their female subordinates, a military spokesman said yesterday.

The Philippine Army said the case of Leoncio Pitao, the most prominent NPA leader in Davao, was typical of his colleagues of equivalent rank. The military allegations could not be independently confirmed.

Citing depositions from former NPA soldiers who have since surrendered, Army spokesman Col. Daniel Lucero said the central committee of the group’s mother organization, the Communist Party of the Philippines, also sanctioned Pitao in 2007 for “pocketing party funds.”

“Leoncio Pitao pockets an average of P5 million ($100,000) per quarter extorted from different business establishments in Davao, which he embezzles for his personal use,” Lucero said in a statement.

He said Pitao also underwent “disciplinary action” in the mid-1990s for sleeping with a married female member of his guerrilla unit.

Early this month, the senior rebel was shot and wounded by a comrade who accused Pitao of sleeping with his wife, Lucero said.

“This account involving a (rebel) leader’s sexual opportunism and financial extortion in the guise of revolutionary taxation is not an aberration but a widespread practice among leaders of this communist terrorist group,” Lucero alleged.

But the NPA accused the Army of riding on the controversy of the Hayden Kho-Katrina Halili sex scandal to hit Pitao, alias “Commander Parago,” by exposing his alleged sex escapades with female comrades. – Jaime Laude