NBI fails to locate Ligot couple

MANILA, Philippines—Agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) tapped to search for former Armed Forces comptroller Jacinto Ligot and his wife, Erlinda, have failed to locate the couple.

NBI deputy director for intelligence services and lawyer Ruel Lasala said agents under his unit have gone to at least four known addresses of the Ligots in Metro Manila but that the couple was not in any of the locations.

“We have also dispatched tracker teams to the north, where the couple may have gone,” Lasala told the Inquirer but refused to disclose the specific province.

Ligot, it was learned, hails from Pozorrubio, Pangasinan.

Nevertheless, Lasala maintained that the couple might simply surface on their own after All Saints’ Day.

“They may want to pay their respects to their dead. It is, after all, a tradition … They might be waiting for regular office hours so they could just post bail,” Lasala pointed out.

The Court of Tax Appeals issued arrest warrants against the Ligot couple after it found probable cause to try the former military comptroller and his wife for allegedly failing to file their income tax returns in 2003 and report on other income they made for that year.

The court set bail of P20,000 for each of them.

Ligot is the second ranking military officer to be charged with tax evasion, the first being former military comptroller Carlos F. Garcia. Based on the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s probe, the Ligots allegedly failed to declare P164.3 million that they made in 2003, making them allegedly liable for P153.3 million in taxes.

Originally posted at 04:20 pm | Monday, October 31, 2011