Senate Blue Ribbon committee to summon Napoles’ husband

MANILA, Philippines - The Senate Blue Ribbon committee will summon the husband of alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles.

During last Thursday’s committee hearing on the pork barrel scam, Sen. Francis Escudero called on the committee to invite Napoles’ husband Jaime Napoles to the next hearing.

Committee chairman Teofisto Guingona III agreed to send out the invitation to Jaime Napoles, a former military officer who has not yet been charged with any crime.

This came after Janet Napoles put up a rock solid wall during her appearance at the hearing, offering nothing in terms of answers to senators’ queries during several hours of grilling.

But this has not discouraged the senators, who believe there are other ways to get the information about the scam involving billions of taxpayers’ money.

Senate Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano said that Jaime Napoles could provide the committee with a lot of information about the business interests of his wife, which she claims are the source of her wealth and not the transactions using the pork barrel funds of legislators.

Last Thursday, Janet Napoles denied that she had any transactions with the Priority Development Assistance Fund of the legislators and disowned the non-government organizations that were used as conduits of these funds.

She claimed that her wealth originated from the coal mining business of her husband.

The coal mining business was said to be a joint venture with an Indonesian businessman named Syafrulla Ismael.

But when she was asked to provide further details about the business, she said that it was her husband who knew about these things.

Cayetano said that it appears that a lot of the family members of Napoles were part of her different business transactions, whether legitimate or not.

“The more documents that we see, the more we see that this is a family affair. The brothers were involved and even the children benefited. But whether they were involved in planning, we don’t know yet,” Cayetano said.

Like Guingona, Cayetano believes that Janet Napoles was lying during her testimony at the Senate with her general denials on the questions raised by the different senators.