Ultimately, everything comes down to the Arroyos, where Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson is concerned.
Lacson on Thursday suggested that his latest expose concerning remittances worth millions of dollars to two Hong Kong-based shell corporations might involve former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo.
While he said he did not have the evidence to directly link the Arroyo couple, “whenever we look at all the anomalies and scratch the surface, there’s an Arroyo underneath”.
“We all know that Naia 3 was overpriced. We also know someone made money, and that government officials are involved. Who and how many, we can only speculate. But if it did not have the Arroyo trademark (tatak Arroyo), how come nothing happened in eight years?” Lacson told the Kapihan sa Senado forum on Thursday.
Why the cover-up?
“Who was in power then? They could have gotten to the bottom of this case, but why the cover-up? If they were not involved, they could have resolved the issue while in power,” he said.
On Wednesday, Lacson said he had asked the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) to look into remittances worth millions of dollars sent from Manila to two Hong Kong-based corporations from 2001 to 2004 that he had uncovered.
He said he had documents linking the remittances to the corruption-ridden Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 (Naia 3) project that was won by the Philippine International Air Terminals Corp. (Piatco).
Lacson said his documents indicated that the two Hong Kong shell corporations registered in the British Virgin Islands had received a series of remittances from 2001 to 2004—at least two consisting of $1 million each and one of $894,000, among others.
He identified the two corporations as Jet Stream Pacific Ltd. International and Mainland Global Ltd.
Lacson said the remittances to the two corporations “[meant] there are government officials in the Philippines who benefited.”
He said there was a possibility that the remittances were actually bribes made to certain parties to cause a court decision favorable to Fraport, the German-based principal investor in the Piatco consortium.
Fraport and Piatco had questioned the government’s expropriation of the Naia 3 in 2003 not only in local courts but in arbitration courts in Signapore and Washington, DC.
The two are seeking $846 in compensation from the government which in 2002 voided the contract that Piatco won to build Naia 3 on the grounds that it was tainted with corruption as the government of deposed President and convicted plunderer Joseph Estrada had renegotiated it in ways that disavantaged the state. The Supreme Court upheld the government and nullified the Piatco contract in 2003.
Estrada disclamer
Estrada on Thursday called the Inquirer to clarify that the Piatco contract was finalized during the term of his predecessor, Fidel Ramos.
The Piatco contract was indeed completed during the Ramos administration. However, it is on record that the basis for the voiding of the Piatco contract by the Arroyo government and the Supreme Court was that the Estrada administration had amended it in such a way as to favor Piatco.
At Thursday’s forum, Lacson said he had suggested that the AMLC work for the release of documents seized from a Hong Kong office in 2006 as these could lead to the identities of bribe-takers in the Piatco “scandal”
Lacson recalled that on July 12, 2006, operatives of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) raided a “satellite office located in the same building” as the office of the Romulo Mabanta Buenaventura Sayoc De los Angeles law firm in Hong Kong.
“They raided a firm in Hong Kong upon the request of the Philippine government and got loads of documents now [sealed] with the appeals court in Hong Kong,” Lacson said.
“If these are unsealed and the government gets hold of the documents (from the) Hong Kong court, we can get a lot (of details about) anomalies involving Piatco and other sources of corruption in the Philippines,” he said.
Lacson said the AMLC should ask the Icac why the satellite company was raided instead of the law firm itself. He noted that the law firm later invoked lawyer-client confidentiality in requesting that the contents be kept secret.
Lacson said he suspects the sealed documents are linked to the remittances sent to the two HK-based shell corporations, especially since the transactions were dated from 2001 to 2004 when the Piatco case was being heard in a Philippine court. With TJ Burgonio