MANILA, Philippines—The murder of publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in 2000 had been linked to the manipulation of Best World (BW) Resources stocks the year before by a crony of deposed President Joseph Estrada, according to Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez.

“There will definitely be a linkage there, the BW and the Dacer cases,” Gonzalez said Tuesday following a the Court of Appeals’ order to pursue the criminal prosecution of BW chair Dante Tan and seven others for stock manipulation.

Tan, a major contributor to Estrada’s 1998 presidential campaign, fled the country before he could be brought to court to answer for illegal trading practices that nearly caused the collapse of the Philippine stock market in 1999.

Estrada on Tuesday scoffed at reports linking the double murder to BW Resources.

“If Dacer was the PR [of BW Resources], why kill him?” Estrada said in a telephone interview.

Estrada maintained he had nothing to do with BW Resources.

“It so happened that Dante Tan is a friend of mine. That’s all,” he said.

A letter by Estrada’s lawyer, written on Malacañang letterhead and addressed to Tan, demanded the turnover to Estrada of BW stocks worth more than P500 million, Antonio Carpio, now Supreme Court associate justice, wrote in a column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on June 24, 2001.

Carpio said “the revelation of this document, if proven to be in Dacer’s possession at the time he was killed, could establish the motive behind Dacer’s killing.”

The appellate court said the Pasig Regional Trial Court should try Tan and his co-accused Federico Galang, Eduardo Lim Jr., Hermogenes Laddaran, Raul de Castro, Emmanuel Edward Co, Mario Juan and Jimmy Juan for violation of the Securities Regulation Code.

Timing

Gonzalez said the Court of Appeals’ order to pursue the criminal case against Tan and his co-accused was “significant” in light of the reopening of the Department of Justice’s investigation of the Dacer-Corbito case.

Gonzalez reconvened the original panel of prosecutors that investigated the double-murder case due to the impending extradition of former police senior superintendents Cezar Mancao II, Glenn Dumlao and Michael Ray Aquino from the United States to face trial in the Philippines.

But Gonzalez said the Court of Appeals’ ruling on the BW scandal was not timed with the reopening of the Dacer-Corbito case. He said he had not read the court decision.

“The moment the BW thing is brought into the open, the circumstances surrounding it revealed, something will be revealed about the transfer of (BW) shares to somebody,” he said.

Gonzalez did not comment when asked if he was referring to Estrada, whom his former Finance Secretary Edgardo Espiritu described as Tan’s business partner in BW Resources, whose subsidiary was granted by the Estrada administration an online bingo franchise.

“It could refer to several people,” the justice secretary said cryptically.

BW’s PR man

Gonzalez said Dacer was hired by Tan to handle BW’s public relations when the scandal broke out.

“Maybe that was the reason why he came across documents. I must assume he must have had documents before that. That’s why he was being put under surveillance,” Gonzalez said.

Abducted

Dacer was abducted on his way to meet former President Fidel Ramos at the Manila Hotel in Manila on Nov. 24, 2000. His and his driver’s burned remains were later recovered in Indang town, Cavite province.

Officials and operatives of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, including Mancao, Dumlao and Aquino—top aides of former national police chief, now senator, Panfilo Lacson—were charged with double murder.

At the time he was abducted, according to Gonzalez, Dacer possibly had documents related to BW’s questionable stock transactions.

“It is possible, because why would Dacer invite Ramos to a [meeting], which was after he met with Erap (Estrada) in Malacañang,” said Gonzalez.

Bits and pieces

“(There are) bits and pieces of incidents that when properly pieced together, the puzzle will emerge,” he said.

Asked how the Dacer-Corbito murders could be linked to the BW scandal, Gonzalez said: “If you could establish that Dacer had those documents on the way to meet Ramos, and that he was also under surveillance and then who gave the order to have those documents burned. That was it then.”

Estrada was impeached by the House of Representatives in November 2000 on charges, among other things, of intervening with the duties of a public servant when he called then Securities and Exchange Commission chair, Perfecto Yasay, five times to clear Tan of any wrongdoing in the BW insider trading scandal.

Impeachment trial

Then an Iloilo congressman, Gonzalez was one of the lead prosecutors in the impeachment trial that followed in the Senate. He handled the BW scandal charge against Estrada.

A team of prosecutors will be created on the BW scandal charges once the justice department receives the decision of the Court of Appeals, Gonzalez said.

He said the Department of Justice would also try to locate Tan who, he said, was reported to have gone in hiding in Taipei, Taiwan, after hiding in China.

Gonzalez said the government could request Taipei to extradite Tan.