Skewed logic on Esmeralda’s ambush

The lawyer who said National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Deputy Director Rey Esmeralda staged his own ambush didn’t know what he was saying.

Why doesn’t he try staging his own ambush so he will know how it is to be shot at and get wounded?

Esmeralda and his brother, Nilo, a Manila policeman assigned as one of his bodyguards, sustained wounds from bullet fragments and glass splinters.

Just because they were not directly hit by bullets, does that mean that they staged their own ambush?

So the skewed logic is that a person who survives an ambush unscathed must have planned it himself.

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Esmeralda will have to live with this painful truth: A colleague in the bureau could have tipped off the ambushers that he was on his way home.

Esmeralda was travelling on a road in Paco from the NBI headquarters on Taft Avenue in Ermita, Manila, when his two-vehicle convoy was waylaid by a motorcycle-riding gunman.

How could his ambushers have known that he had just come out of the NBI compound?

Esmeralda is suspected of having tipped me off about the kidnapping of a Japanese woman by some NBI agents.

My exposé led to the dismissal of NBI Director Magtanggol Gatdula and other subordinates.

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If Cristino Naguiat Jr., chair of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., returned to the gift-giver the Chanel bag meant for his wife, then he was not guilty of bribery.

As to the other claim that he and his family were provided free accommodations in Macau during their visit to Asia’s gambling capital, there was also nothing wrong with it.

Gaming operators—and Naguiat as Pagcor chair is one—receive reciprocal perks from their counterparts when they visit gambling capitals.

That’s the reason the accusation against then First Gentleman Mike

Arroyo staying in a $20,000 suite in Las Vegas years ago did not hold water—because the freebie was sponsored by then Pagcor Chair Efraim Genuino.

Genuino was given the free suite by his counterparts in Las Vegas. In turn, he passed this on to Arroyo who was going to watch a fight of Manny Pacquiao.

Perks and privileges to gaming officials are an industry practice.

It’s like an airline owner and his family given first class accommodations by another airline as a matter of courtesy.

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It would have been different if Pagcor were purely a regulatory body so its officials who enjoy perks and privileges from casino owners would be committing graft.

But apart from being a regulatory agency, Pagcor also runs casinos, which makes it a gaming operator.

In other words, there is nothing wrong with a gaming operator being wined and dined by his counterparts in other countries because it’s a practice in the industry.

What’s the solution? Make Pagcor purely a regulatory body and the perks and privileges its officials now enjoy will disappear.