Acierto: Duterte put P50-M bounty on my head

Former PCol Eduardo Acierto (in dark shirt) takes his oath via recorded Zoom during the 10th Quad Comm hearing held at the House of Representatives. INQUIRER PHOTO/LYN RILLON

One of the witnesses against former President Rodrigo Duterte in the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation of his alleged crimes against humanity in the drug war claimed that a P50-million bounty on his head was placed after implicating two Chinese friends of the ex-leader in the narcotics trade.

Former Police Col. Eduardo Acierto on Thursday told members of the House quad committee that Duterte and the former President’s close aide, Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go, allegedly put out the bounty when he said in a report that Michael Yang and Allan Lim were involved in drugs.

Acierto was deputy director of the Drug Enforcement Unit of the Philippine National Police when he submitted his report in 2017 to then PNP chief and now Sen. Ronald dela Rosa, identifying Yang and Lim as main players in the illegal drug trade in the country.

READ: Acierto: Duterte ordered my arrest for knowing Michael Yang’s drug ties 

“But instead of speaking to the person who prepared the report, he spoke to Allan Lim,” he told the quad committee in his testimony via Zoom.

Acierto has been in hiding since he was dismissed from the service in 2018.

He said that when he gave the same report to then-Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Director General Aaron Aquino, he was assured that it would be forwarded to Malacañang. But Aquino subsequently said he could not remember to whom he submitted the report, according to Acierto.

Still no action

Dela Rosa’s successor, Oscar Albayalde, also took no action on the report and eventually tried to supposedly discredit it.

“What they did was they slandered me, slandered my team,” he told the lawmakers. “One of my co-workers who helped prepare the report was kidnapped, Capt. Lito Pirote, who remains missing. Another retired Master Sergeant (Alejandro Gerardo) Gerry Liwanag was shot and killed.”

He said that he and former Police Director Ismael Fajardo were publicly vilified as “ninja cops” by Duterte.

According to the Department of Justice in 2019, Malacañang offered a P10-million bounty on him and other alleged “ninja cops,” or police officers involved in drugs.

Yang and Lim, it turned out, were close to Duterte. Yang served briefly as a presidential economic adviser.

Closeness to Duterte, Go

Acierto said that Yang’s name first cropped up in the narcotics trade during the election campaign period in 2016, when the Chinese national was linked to two shipping containers loaded with chemicals used in the manufacture of “shabu” (crystal meth) in Dumoy, Davao City, and Cagayan de Oro.

He found out that Yang was close to Duterte and Go when he saw a picture of the three aboard a private plane. Acierto confirmed another picture of Duterte with Yang and Lim.

He said that when his report on the two Chinese nationals could not be disputed, the former President publicly claimed that Acierto was involved in smuggling high-powered firearms and billions of pesos worth of shabu.

Duterte could not respond to Acierto’s allegations during Thursday’s quad committee hearing as he again snubbed its summons to appear as a “resource person” in its investigation of the thousands of alleged extrajudicial killings (EJKs) in his drug war. There was no reaction from Go.

Is he afraid?

House leaders taunted the former President for supposedly chickening out of the inquiry.

Duterte did not appear during the quad committee’s Oct. 22 hearing, saying that he was not feeling well and would appear after Nov. 1.

“It is our view that former President Duterte was frightened of attending the Quad Comm hearing because he’s afraid to answer serious questions from House members and families of EJK victims seeking justice,” Majority Leader Manuel Jose Dalipe said in a joint statement with Assistant Majority Leader Francisco Paolo Ortega V.

Ortega pointed out that Duterte likely backed out to avoid intense questioning by congressmen on his antidrug campaign, which allegedly targeted only low-level drug offenders, and avoided investigations of administration allies and Chinese drug lords.

Lawyer in defense

Duterte’s lawyer, Martin Delgra, defended Duterte’s absence, saying in a Nov. 5 letter to quad committee lead chair Rep. Robert Ace Barbers that the ex-President’s presence was “no longer necessary” after he had appeared in the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee’s inquiry last week.

Duterte doubted the super panel inquiry’s integrity, independence, and probity. “It is apparent that the inquiry is a mere political ploy aimed to indict him for crime or crimes he did not commit,” Delgra said.

He claimed that quad committee cochairpersons Rep. Bienvenido Abante Jr. of Manila and Rep. Dan Fernandez of Laguna had prejudged Duterte’s liability under Republic Act No. 9851 on crimes against international humanitarian law, genocide, and other crimes against humanity.

Undue pressure

Delgra said Duterte was concerned over allegations that the committee tried to “persuade, if not unduly pressure, resource persons to admit matters under oath they lack knowledge of or, [worse], unduly induce them to say something not true before the joint committee inquiry,” which was subornation to perjury, a crime.

Assistant Majority Leader Zia Adiong said that Delgra should be invited to expound on his statements in the letter questioning the integrity of the quad committee and alleging subornation to perjury against two quad committee cochairpersons.

The committee approved Antipolo City Rep. Romeo Acop’s motion to invite Delgra to clarify his remarks.

Grijaldo must explain

The panel also ordered Police Col. Hector Grijaldo to explain why he should not be cited in contempt for failing to comply with its subpoena.

Grijaldo had testified in the Senate that Fernandez and Abante tried to coerce him to validate his Philippine National Police Academy classmate former Police Col. Royina Garma’s claims of a reward system in the drug war.

Fernandez and Abante denied Grijaldo’s claim. They said they invited him to the hearing as he was the Mandaluyong City police chief when state lottery secretary Wesley Barayuga was killed in July 2020.

Garma’s lawyers, Emerito Quilang and Rotciv Cumigad, attested in a joint statement that, “At no point did any of the congressmen attempt to pressure Mr. Grijaldo into conforming to a predetermined narrative.”