Revilla lawyer: Whistleblowers should be charged in pork barrel scam
Atty. Joel Bodegon. INQUIRER.net/NOY MORCOSO
MANILA, Philippines —The lawyer of Senator Ramon Revilla Jr. turned the tables on the whistleblowers in the alleged pork barrel scam, saying his client had no part in pillaging public funds for kickbacks.
Atty. Joel Bodegon on Thursday appealed to the Sandiganbayan first division to dismiss the plunder case against Revilla.
“Revilla has no wrongdoing, which means the case against him should be dismissed,” Bodegon told reporters after the hearing.
He said the information that held Revilla liable was void because the documents involving Revilla in participating in the scam were forged and falsified.
He added that it should be the whistleblowers who should be charged for the crime because they were the ones who admitted to forging transaction documents.
“Those who are at fault here are those who admitted that they forged documents to steal the PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund) of Revilla,” Bodegon said in Filipino, referring to the whistleblowers led by alleged mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles’ former employee Benhur Luy.
Meanwhile, Revilla had no part in the forgery and did not receive a single centavo in kickbacks, Bodegon added.
“Revilla did not get even a single centavo,” he said.
Bodegon made the statement after the Sandiganbayan first division dismissed Revilla’s motion to suspend the pork scam proceedings.
The Ombudsman in indicting Revilla said the movie actor-turned-senator collected P224.512 million kickbacks from 2006 to 2010 from the alleged illegal disbursement of his PDAF.
Revilla faces one count of plunder and 16 counts of graft.
Also charged are Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Jinggoy Estrada, as well as alleged mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles.
The pork barrel scam is an elaborate scheme of allegedly diverting billions of public funds, meant to easy poverty in the lawmakers’ constituencies, to ghost projects for kickbacks.
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