Culprits tried hard to detract ZTE probe

There’s probable cause after all. Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales found prima facie evidence to file graft raps Thursday against Gloria and Mike Arroyo in the NBN-ZTE scam.

Deputy Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro viewed things differently in May 2010. The appointee of President Gloria saw no wrongdoing. The Ombudsman at the time was Merceditas Gutierrez, Gloria’s one-time justice secretary and Mike’s law school classmate.

Although Gutierrez inhibited from the preliminary investigation, suspicion was rife then that she would swing the Arroyos’ exoneration. They were cleared alright, along with transportation-communications secretary Leandro Mendoza.

Ombudsman investigators lamely claimed then that Gloria, being President, was immune from suit. They conveniently ignored their duty to gather evidence against any erring Chief Executive, for Congress to use in possible impeachment. Probable cause was found only against economic secretary Romy Neri and former Comelec head Ben Abalos.

The Ombudsman also attempted weeks before to implicate Joey de Venecia III and father, former Speaker José de Venecia Jr. But it looked so preposterous that the agency had to backtrack in May 2010. For, it was in fact Joey the telecoms businessman who had exposed the $329-million (P17-billion) anomaly, and linked Mike. José was reportedly the source of photographs of Gloria and Mike golfing at ZTE’s exclusive fairway in Shenzhen, China, when the deal was being negotiated in Nov. 2006.

This time around deemed likely guilty were not only Gloria and Mike but also Mendoza. A fourth count of graft was added to the three filed in 2010 against Abalos.

Two counts of violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act were listed against Gloria. She showed inordinate interest in the deal by hurrying it up despite defects. And she okayed and witnessed its signing in Boao, Hainan, China, in Apr. 2007 even if grossly, manifestly injurious to the public interest.

One count was seen of violating the Code of Conduct for Public Officials. That is, Gloria’s lunching and golfing at ZTE headquarters, verily soliciting and accepting gifts from contractors seeking her imprimatur. Mike allegedly committed the same offense as presidential spouse. Mendoza was incriminated as the contract signatory.

Gloria initially claimed to have broken no law since she annulled the deal in Oct. 2007. By that time Joey had exposed a $200-million (P10-billion) overprice. Too, Neri already had testified in the ensuing Senate inquiry that Abalos tried to bribe him P200 million to endorse the deal. And, ZTE execs already had been forced to give Senate investigators copies of the contract, which they at first withheld for confidentiality of proprietary information. Gloria’s cancellation looked more like cover-up than correction.

Another flimsy defense: there was no proof of fraud since the ZTE contract had gone missing. Allegedly only hours after the signing all copies were stolen from the Boao hotel room of the Philippine commercial attaché to Guangzhou, Emmanuel Ang. Gloria’s fixers came up with that yarn only in June 2007, two months after this and other writers kept asking, in the name of transparency, for a copy of the contract. In a veiled threat to those pursuing the story, the pliant NBI announced to investigate me as one of the supposed document thieves; their “proof”: I knew too much about the deal.

The “stolen contract” tale wouldn’t wash. The “investigators” couldn’t tell how many copies were “purloined”, or if ZTE execs had taken some after the signing but before the “theft”. They claimed that four other unrelated deals signed at the Boao airport that dawn were pilfered was well, but the Filipino contractors belied them. Contrary to the canard, hotel security cameras didn’t show any break-in of Ang’s hotel room. They couldn’t produce Ang, whom they allegedly had sued for infidelity in the custody of official papers.

The whitewashers had employed other ruses to detract the probe. At the Senate, for one, Neri freely testified about Abalos’s bribe offer and of reporting it to Gloria in Feb. 2007. After which, he clammed up about what Gloria told him to do that made the contract signing nonetheless possible. Waving an official order from then-executive secretary Eduardo Ermita, he invoked privileged communication. He sought relief from the Supreme Court to keep silent about probable high crime. To the surprise of lawyer-senators, the SC upheld Neri. Supposedly executive privilege covered the ZTE deal because bordering on diplomacy and national security. Subsequently two vans of armed men, never identified or arrested, shot up Neri’s house.

The worst cover-up try was the abduction of second whistleblower Jun Lozada upon arrival at the Manila airport in Feb. 2008. Malacañang had sent him to Hong Kong, with huge stipends, to evade testifying about what he knew as Neri’s technical consultant. Conscience-stricken, he informed opposition senators Noynoy Aquino and Ping Lacson that he was flying back. High police officers and presidential security agents whisked him out of the plane, ostensibly to be silenced forever. They released him only because of the media outcry.

Two questions linger:

• Did Malacañang release to ZTE the stipulated 15-percent down payment, nearly $50 million, within 30 days of signing or by May 2007, which was why Gloria hesitated to rescind the deal in Oct.?

• Will the Ombudsman also investigate the Diwalwal-ZTE deal, in which Gloria authorized trade secretary Peter Favila and presidential chief of staff Mike Defensor illegally to sign away mining rights to an alien entity?

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