Lacson’s 2 worlds: Manila & California

San Francisco, California – While Sen. Ping Lacson was unfurling days ago in Manila a presidential campaign banner against corruption, his hidden wealth on this side of the globe was being exposed in court. As he rambled a third privilege speech in Congress against presidential spouse Mike Arroyo, a Filipino official was testifying here about his criminal ways. It must be tricky living in two different worlds.

NBI Director Reynaldo Wycoco was summoned by the Superior Court of California in Alameda county to the hearing on Lacson?s dollar deposits. The judge needed to determine if Lacson is capable of paying civil damages to Filipino-American businesswoman Blanquita Pelaez, who had sued him for slander, infliction of emotional distress, and interference in economic relation. The court had awarded Pelaez $3 million. Wycoco submitted documents from the FBI, sent by the US Attorney General under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, attesting to the existence of bank accounts of Lacson and spouse Alice Deperio. Through press releases in Manila, Lacson keeps denying his wealth.

Press releases are not acceptable in court, however. So Lacson?s lawyer Barbara Zanger couldn’t cite them to refute the FBI papers. In an effort to stop Wycoco’s testimony from becoming part of court records, she instead raised anew Lacson?s old contention that the California court has no jurisdiction over a Philippine senator. Was it dilatory tactic, no different from how Lacson lawyers in Manila rake up technicalities to delay his arrest for trial for the Kuratong Baleleng multiple murder? If it was, the judge readily saw through the ploy. He cut Zanger off, reminding her that Lacson had committed the three infractions on US soil or under US laws, and so was answerable to a US court. Lacson had ignored the civil case for more than a year, and thus defaulted on his chance to defend himself. The issue at hand was his ability to pay and the judiciousness of the $3-million award.

Details of the dollar accounts are old hat. Pelaez, through lawyer Rodel Rodis, had submitted these to court months ago. Long reported in Manila newspapers were the Lacson spouses? transactions by the hundreds of thousands of dollars from 1996, when he was a police colonel, to 2001, when he was running for senator. What is new, though, is the revelation that Lacson had bought a house in Chula Vista, California, for $78,000 in 1996, from a monthly salary of $450 in the Philippine National Police. If the judge was surprised with the disparity, he didn?t show it. Neither are political watchers in Manila surprised with the hypocrisy with which politicians feign uprightness while accusing everyone else of sin.

During the week of the hearing here, Lacson ranted in Manila about the First Couple?s supposed real estate holdings in California, He claimed that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and spouse had acquired five residential and commercial buildings in San Francisco and suburbs in 1992-1993 but did not so declare in her mandatory annual statement of assets and liabilities. Mike Arroyo repeated his explanation since 1996, when the Senate ethics committee queried then-Senator Gloria about it, that it was his brother Ignacio who actually bought the real estate. These were put in his and Gloria’s name at that time to avoid legal complications because Ignacio supposedly was in the process of having his marriage annulled.

Lacson pooh-poohed Arroyo?s contention, saying the latter had used LTA Realty Inc. in California and LTA Corp. in Manila to buy the pieces of property. The undercapitalized firms, he said, were in no position just the same to acquire millions of dollars worth of assets.

Curiously, Lacson?s own real estate holdings came under scrutiny also last week. Likewise submitted to the California court were findings that, aside from the Chula Vista house bought in 1996 and sold in 1999, seven other houses and buildings could be traced to Lacson. The addresses are registered in the names of friends or corporations, and were not declared as well in his statements of assets and liabilities as a government employee. The dollar deposits, despite proof of transactions through signatures on bank forms, were not included in the SALs too.

In his first "Incredible Hulk" speech against the Arroyos in August, Lacson claimed that certain friends and government officials cook up multimillion-peso deals in Mike’s office at LTA Building in Makati. To this day, he has yet to substantiate his malicious allegations about the private individuals he had named. He has yet to explain too why and how he apparently had them put under surveillance.

In California and the East Coast, meanwhile, authorities have started to monitor the movements of known associates of Lacson. Most of these men belonged to the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force that Lacson headed during his heyday. Like him, they have been linked to kidnapping, murder, drug trafficking, smuggling, and money laundering. US officials anticipate extradition requests from Manila and thus compile reports on their findings. Their regular meeting places and hangouts are now known.

Two of these confederates, in hiding for the kidnapping-murder of publicist Bubby Dacer and co-accused with Lacson in the Kuratong Baleleng massacre, have been spotted in a country club near this city. They fled to America in 2001 using tourist visas, but one is now working as a security consultant and the other has enrolled in a university without proper permits.

Lacson claims to have lost contact with them, but there are witnesses willing to swear that he met with them earlier this year in this city.

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