Janet Lim-Napoles and Senate President Franklin Drilon INQUIRER File Photo
MANILA, Philippines—Senate President Franklin Drilon on Tuesday admitted knowing detained businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles “socially” but denied using his pork barrel funds to any of her alleged faked non-government organizations (NGOs).
“I know her socially. I don’t know her business,” Drilon said at a press conference in the Senate.
“I meet her socially in parties. It’s possible there are photos of those meetings because you know as politicians, we always take pictures,” he said.
Drilon said he had met Napoles, who was at the center of the “pork barrel” scam, probably three to four times in social gatherings so he would not be surprised if there were more pictures of them that would later come out.
He issued the statement following a television report Monday night, showing pictures of him and his wife together with Napoles in one dinner they attended at the Heritage Park.
He confirmed that they were present at the dinner because his wife was an active church worker and there were Chinese seminarians who were present at the same gathering.
Drilon also admitted knowing Napoles’ husband, who was also seen with him in another picture.
“Yes. I knew him as the husband of Napoles in that gathering. He was introduced to me,” he said.
But the Senate leader reiterated that neither a single peso went to Napoles’ NGOs nor had they any discussion about her NGOs or his Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) , also known as “pork barrel.”
“There’s clear effort to implicate me as guilty by association with the picture shown last night on television,” he said.
“Let me make it very clear that none of my PDAF allocations was ever assigned or given to any projects of Napoles or any of her NGOs,” he said.
Drilon recognized his shortcoming when he failed to immediately reveal to the public that he knew Napoles.
“Maybe that’s a shortcoming that I had, but that doesn’t make me guilty of using her NGOs. Maybe looking back, I should have revealed it because I did not use any of her NGOs,” he said.
Originally posted at 1:04 pm
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