Pichay denies dealing with Napoles NGOs

Former Surigao del Norte Rep. Prospero Pichay Jr. INQUIRER file photo

MANILA—Former representative Prospero Pichay bristled Wednesday at his reported inclusion in a plunder case to be filed by a group of whistle-blowers in connection with a P10-billion pork barrel scam allegedly engineered by businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles.

Reacting to the Philippine Daily Inquirer report,  Pichay said his only dealing with Napoles, whom the whistle-blowers had tagged as the mastermind behind the scheme, was to agree to invest in Asia Star Power Resources Corp. for power generation projects in Mindanao.

Pichay, the Surigao del Sur congressman from 1998 to 2007, blasted lawyer Levi Baligod for including him in the private complaint to be filed at the Department of Justice, and said he never had any dealings with Napoles’ dummy nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to which funds from the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) were allegedly channeled.

“I dare Atty. Baligod to bring it on. For the record, none of the PDAF projects for the benefit of the people in the 1st district of Surigao del Sur were ever coursed through any of the NGOs mentioned by Atty. Baligod’s witnesses,” Pichay said in a statement.

“To make it very clear, I have never dealt with Ms. Janet Napoles or her companies on any transactions involving public funds,” he added.

Pichay said he re-connected with Napoles last year after a chance meeting. She had then mentioned a plan to put up a power generation company in Mindanao, and he agreed to be an investor.

“This is a legitimate private business enterprise that is only at the start-up phase. But it has yet to take off and its prospects have been permanently damaged because of this controversy, so it is likely to be scrapped,” he said.

“That is just about the entire extent of my involvement in the affairs of Ms. Napoles. So once again, I challenge Atty. Baligod to go ahead and make my day,” he said.

Pichay, in a phone interview, also lamented that an earlier Inquirer report, in which he denied that the power generation firm was a cover for the alleged scam and in which he defended the Napoles couple, mentioned his dismissal from public office when this fact was irrelevant to the pork barrel scam issue.

He said he hoped there would be no malicious insinuations.