Senate wants a peek at PDI files
Sen. Teofisto Guingona III and Benhur Luy INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, chair of the Senate blue ribbon committee, has asked the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) for its copy of the digital files of whistleblower Benhur Luy to aid in its investigation of the P10-billion pork barrel scam.
“We would like to request for a soft copy of the Benhur Luy files, complete and unexpurgated, since they will be analyzed in relation to the ongoing investigations of the Senate committee on accountability of public officers and investigations (blue ribbon),” Guingona said in a letter addressed to Inquirer editor in chief Letty J. Magsanoc.
The letter, dated June 5, was received by the Inquirer on the same day.
According to Magsanoc, “the Inquirer will comply with Guingona’s request.”
Earlier, the National Bureau of Investigation submitted to Guingona its copy of Luy’s digital files, which the NBI said had deleted files.
According to an Inquirer IT specialist, Luy’s digital files in the possession of the newspaper was a 7-gigabyte hard disk, while the NBI copy which was distributed to media by Guingona was 4 gigabytes.
The Inquirer copy was given to the paper by Luy’s former lawyer, Levito Baligod, on April 27, 2013, when Luy’s family, other witnesses and friends came to the Inquirer to ask for assistance in exposing the alleged illegal activities of Luy’s former employer, Janet Lim-Napoles, and her highly placed clients.
The hard disk contains details of transactions between Napoles and various lawmakers, who allegedly used her bogus nongovernment organizations as depositories of their pork barrel-funded projects.
The contents of Luy’s hard disk formed the basis for the Inquirer’s 13-part series which exposed Napoles’ transactions with lawmakers from 2002 to 2012.
Luy’s financial records formed part of the evidence submitted by the NBI to the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with the plunder cases filed recently against 38 people including Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla.
Luy’s records mentioned 25 former and current senators and about 150 former and current members of the House of Representatives among those who funnelled their pork barrel allocations to Napoles and received kickbacks.
It also names government officials, priests, military officers and media men who allegedly received cash and expensive gifts from Napoles.
All the allegations in Luy’s files have yet to be proven.
All the lawmakers have denied conspiring with Napoles to get kickbacks from their Priority Development Assistance Fund or pork barrel allocations.
Luy’s files showed the alleged scam involved projects for members of the Commission on Appointments, the minority bloc in the House of Representatives in 2003, the Department of Transportation and Communications, savings from the Department of Agriculture, Department of Agrarian Reform, an allocation for the Senate President Pro Tempore, majority floor leader and for budget insertions.
Among the 15 incumbent senators mentioned in Luy’s disk were Enrile, Revilla, Estrada, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Vicente Sotto III, Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Gringo Honasan, Loren Legarda, Aquilino Pimentel III, Manuel Lapid, Cynthia Villar, JV Ejercito, Franklin Drilon, Ralph Recto and Alan Cayetano.
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