The general manager of the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) has taken a 60-day leave of absence following accusations that he had tried to extort P300,000 from a fishpen operator.
LLDA General Manager Rodrigo Cabrera, who had decried what he described as a baseless claim, said his leave was intended to give the Office of the President a free hand in conducting a “fair and unprejudiced investigation.”
“In line with the President’s ’matuwid na landas’ mandate, I believe that distancing myself from the investigation is the right and honorable thing to do so that only the truth will prevail, free from emotion or opinion,” Cabrera said in a brief statement.
Cabrera, who has been chief of LLDA for only seven months, said he wanted to assure President Benigno Aquino III and the public that he would submit himself to the law in order to preserve the LLDA’s credibility and integrity.
The allegation against Cabrera was leveled by a Charlie Tan, who reportedly owns fishpens in Laguna Lake. Tan claimed that Cabrera and two other officials—Donato Rivera, head of the LLDA’s engineering division, and Jackie Davo, division chief of the LLDA’s lake management division—had asked for P300,000 from him in exchange for approving his request to transfer his fishpens from Jala-Jala, Rizal, to Laguna.
The alleged extortion attempt was reportedly recorded in an audio-video clip which was aired recently by a TV station.
Cabrera and the others denied Tan’s claim and described the latter as an illegal fishpen operator in Laguna Lake, the country’s largest freshwater lake.
But the LLDA chief also said that he had instructed a committee to look into Tan’s allegations that the agency’s executives had been involved in an extortion attempt.
The LLDA is keeping a close watch on Laguna Lake to prevent a massive fishkill similar to that which plagued Taal Lake and the waters of Anda and Bolinao in Pangasinan.
The fishkill was attributed to overcrowding of fishpens. Leila B. Salaverria and Kristine Felisse Mangunay