Red Cross takes up cudgels for Gordon

Sen. Richard Gordon INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

The Philippine Red Cross (PRC) took up the cudgels for its chair, Sen. Richard Gordon, in his fight with colleague Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who filed a plunder complaint against Gordon for allegedly diverting P193 million in pork-barrel funds to PRC in a conflict-of-interest case.

Oscar Palabyab, PRC secretary general, said Trillanes’ complaint was “based on misleading and outdated facts.”

Trillanes, on Wednesday, filed the plunder complaint at the Office of the Ombudsman.

“We will simply have to restate our position that all those issues have been properly dealt with but are now being sensationalized to the prejudice of PRC,” said Palabyab in a statement from Ankara, where he and Gordon were attending the general assembly of the Red Cross Red Crescent movement.

Palabyab said PRC carried out projects as an implementing agency of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in the past.

Gordon, said Palabyab, “had no participation at all in the implementation of those projects and in the disbursement of the funds the PRC received from DSWD.”